Sea
Red Sea
Natural Earth’s outline of the Red Sea measures about 446,000 km² (172,000 mi²), the 13th largest of the 42 seas on sizeversus, and about the same size as Sweden.
200 km
- Red Sea
- Sweden
The numbers
- 446,000km²Area, measured172,000 mi² · Natural Earth outline
- 446,000km²Area, publishedWikidata · agrees within 2%
- 3,040mGreatest depthWikidata
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 Red Sea
- The Arabian Sea, the largest of the 42 seas ranked on sizeversus, is 9.25× the size of the Red Sea; the Red Sea ranks 13th.
- The Red Sea sits between the Solomon Sea (745,000 km²) and the Black Sea (422,000 km²) in the ranking.
- Counted as a country, the Red Sea would be larger than 155 of the 212 countries listed on sizeversus and would rank 58th by area, between Uzbekistan (448,000 km²) and Sweden (446,000 km²).
- It is larger than 49 of the 51 US states and districts (the biggest of them is California, 410,000 km²) and smaller than 2.
- It is larger than 25 of the 31 provinces and regions of China (the biggest of them is Gansu, 406,000 km²) and smaller than 6.
- The closest Chinese province is Heilongjiang (452,000 km²): the Red Sea is about the same size as Heilongjiang.
- Wikidata records a greatest depth of 3,040 m.
- The Red Sea lies at 20°N, close to the equator, where a standard web map (Web Mercator) is nearly true to size: it inflates area by only about 1.1×.
- Laid out flat, the Red Sea stretches about 1,740 km north to south and 1,000 km east to west.
- Wikidata’s published figure of 446,000 km² agrees with our measured 446,000 km², to within 2%.
About the same size as
Countries
On the shore
Natural Earth’s outlines of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Eritrea, Yemen, Sudan and Djibouti lie within 25 km of the outline of the Red Sea. 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 Red Sea ranks
The Red Sea is the 13th largest of the 42 seas on sizeversus, ranked by measured area.
Compare the Red Sea
Share this outline
Sources and method
- Outline
- Natural Earth, 1:10m Marine Areas (geography_marine_polys), public domain (Marine Areas (geography_marine_polys)). Natural Earth draws marine areas for labels and cuts them at named sub-areas; the outline is kept because its area matches the published one.
- 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%.
- Depth, volume, height
- As recorded in Wikidata; a volume that cannot be right for the area and depth is left out.
- 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