Lake system · counted from 5 pieces
Great Lakes
Natural Earth draws the Great Lakes in 5 separate pieces, and this page counts them together. They measure about 245,000 km² (94,600 mi²), and about the same size as the United Kingdom. Counted as one, the Great Lakes would be the 2nd largest of the 100 lakes on sizeversus.
Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, counted together. Lake Saint Clair and the connecting rivers are not counted. Lakes Michigan and Huron are joined by the Straits of Mackinac and stand at one water level, which is why some sources treat them as a single lake; here they are kept as the two lakes Natural Earth draws.
- Great Lakes
- United Kingdom
The numbers
- 245,000km²Area, measured94,600 mi² · Natural Earth outline
- 244,000km²Area, 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 the Great Lakes
- If it counted as one lake, the Great Lakes would rank 2nd of the 100 lakes on sizeversus, behind the Caspian Sea (379,000 km²) and ahead of Lake Victoria (67,000 km²).
- The largest piece, Lake Superior (82,300 km²), is 34% of the whole; the smallest, Lake Ontario (19,500 km²), is 7.9%.
- Counted as a country, the Great Lakes would be larger than 135 of the 212 countries listed on sizeversus and would rank 78th by area, between Ecuador (255,000 km²) and Guinea (244,000 km²).
- It is larger than 40 of the 51 US states and districts (the biggest of them is Minnesota, 225,000 km²) and smaller than 11.
- It is larger than 23 of the 31 provinces and regions of China (the biggest of them is Guangxi, 237,000 km²) and smaller than 8.
- The closest US state is Michigan (250,000 km²): the Great Lakes is about the same size as Michigan.
- On a standard web map (Web Mercator), a place at 45°N is drawn about 2.0× too large in area, so the Great Lakes looks bigger there than it is.
- Laid out flat, the Great Lakes stretches about 852 km north to south and 1,270 km east to west.
- Counted as one, the 5 pieces measure 245,000 km². The published figure for the whole, 244,000 km² (Wikidata, the sum of the published figures of its parts), is 0.4% below it.
The 5 pieces of the Great Lakes
Natural Earth draws each piece as its own outline; their areas add up to 245,000 km². Largest first.
- Lake Superior82,300 km² · 34%
- Lake Huron59,900 km² · 24%
- Lake Michigan57,500 km² · 23%
- Lake Erie25,700 km² · 11%
- Lake Ontario19,500 km² · 7.9%
About the same size as
Countries
On the shore
Natural Earth’s outlines of the United States and Canada contain or lie within 4 km of the outline of the Great Lakes. 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 the Great Lakes ranks
Counted as one, the Great Lakes would rank 2nd of the 100 lakes on sizeversus (its own pieces left out).
Compare the Great Lakes
Share this outline
Sources and method
- Outline
- Natural Earth, 1:10m Lakes + Reservoirs, public domain (Lakes + Reservoirs). 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