Island
Greenland (island)
Natural Earth’s outline of Greenland (island) measures about 2,171,000 km² (838,000 mi²), the largest of the 81 islands on sizeversus, and about the same size as Greenland.
500 km
- Greenland (island)
- Greenland
The numbers
- 2,171,000km²Area, measured838,000 mi² · Natural Earth outline
- 2,166,000km²Area, publishedWikidata · agrees within 2%
The area is measured from the outline drawn above, on the WGS84 ellipsoid; the published figure is shown beside it, and a water body is kept only if the two are within 10%.
What the numbers say about Greenland (island)
- Greenland (island) is the largest of the 81 islands on sizeversus, 2.80× the size of New Guinea, the next largest.
- Counted as a country, Greenland (island) would be larger than 201 of the 212 countries listed on sizeversus and would rank 12th by area, between Algeria (2,309,000 km²) and Greenland (2,154,000 km²).
- It is larger than all 51 US states and districts.
- It is larger than all 31 provinces and regions of China.
- The closest US state is Alaska (1,505,000 km²): Greenland (island) is 1.44× the size of Alaska.
- On a standard web map (Web Mercator), a place at 73°N is drawn about 11.8× too large in area, so Greenland (island) looks bigger there than it is.
- Laid out flat, Greenland (island) stretches about 2,640 km north to south and 1,440 km east to west.
- Wikidata’s published figure of 2,166,000 km² agrees with our measured 2,171,000 km², to within 2%.
About the same size as
Countries
US states
Chinese provinces
Where it lies
Natural Earth’s outlines of Greenland contain or lie within 4 km of the outline of Greenland (island). That is what its geometry says, and it is not a statement about who owns the water or where any border runs in it.
Where Greenland (island) ranks
Greenland (island) is the 1st largest of the 81 islands on sizeversus, ranked by measured area.
Ranked islands
Compare Greenland (island)
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Sources and method
- Outline
- Natural Earth, 1:10m Geography Regions (geography_regions_polys), public domain (Geography Regions (geography_regions_polys)). Outlines of lakes are drawn at 1:10 million.
- Boundary
- A lake or a sea has no legal boundary of its own. The outline is a cartographic one, and the page says so by showing the measured area beside the published one.
- Area basis
- Measured outline: computed on the WGS84 ellipsoid from the full-detail outline and shown rounded. Published figure: Wikidata (CC0), fetched 2026-11-11. An outline is kept within 10% of the published figure and matched to other places automatically within 5%.
- Shore
- Countries whose Natural Earth outline contains or comes close to the water's outline; computed, not a statement of ownership.
- Drawing
- Each outline is projected with an equal-area projection centred on its own centroid, so areas stay true and two can be laid over each other.
- Data built
- 2026-11-11