Kartavera — the world at its true size

The world, in proportion.

Kartavera is an atlas that draws every country at its true size. The map above uses the Equal Earth projection, where a square kilometre in Greenland takes exactly as much screen as one in Congo. Pick any country, drag it anywhere on the world, and compare it with what it lands on. Slide the map back to Mercator to see how much your usual map has been lying.

Greenland as a Mercator map draws it, dashed, beside Greenland at its true size laid over DR Congo

On a Mercator mapAt its true size

True size, side by side

Every country on an equal-area map. Lay one over another anywhere on Earth and its area never changes: Greenland over DR Congo is as big in Africa as in the Arctic.

The globe turned towards Africa, with DR Congo marked

From Mercator to the globe

Slide one map from Mercator through Equal Earth to a globe of the real Earth, and watch the distortion melt away.

Every figure on the map

Colour the world by population, income, life expectancy, internet use, forests, CO₂ or government, find countries by typing a question, and open the ranking behind any figure.

Games you come back to

A daily round, practice that brings back what you missed, Flag Rush, duels, weekly leagues, and a passport that fills with every country you get right.

ENGermanyESAlemaniaPTAlemanhaDEDeutschlandFRAllemagneSRNemačka

In your language

Every page, name, number and game in English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, French and Serbian.

Why the map you know is wrong

Gerardus Mercator drew his map in 1569 so that a ship's compass course would be a straight line. To do that he had to stretch the world more and more toward the poles. Greenland ends up looking like Africa; in reality Africa is fourteen times larger. The projection was never meant for comparing countries, yet it is the one on nearly every screen.

Equal Earth, published in 2018, keeps areas exact and continents recognisable. Kartavera uses it for the world map, and when you drag a country across the map it rotates the whole sphere underneath, so the country's area cannot change, not even by a pixel. The numbers beside the map come from Natural Earth, Wikidata and the World Bank, each with its year and source.

Questions people ask

Is Greenland really smaller than DR Congo?

Yes. Greenland covers about 2.17M km² and the Democratic Republic of the Congo about 2.34M km², so Greenland is 0.92× the size of DR Congo. On a Mercator map Greenland looks larger than the whole of Africa, which is roughly 14× bigger.

Why does Africa look small on most maps?

Most web and classroom maps use the Mercator projection, which stretches areas more and more the further they are from the equator. Africa sits on the equator and is drawn close to its true size; Europe, Russia, Canada and Greenland are inflated several times over, so Africa looks small only by comparison.

What is the Equal Earth projection?

Equal Earth is an equal-area map projection published in 2018 by Bojan Šavrič, Tom Patterson and Bernhard Jenny. Every region on the map has the same area as on the globe, so countries can be compared honestly, while the continents keep familiar shapes.

Is Kartavera free?

Yes. There is nothing to sign up for, no cookies and no trackers. The atlas, the daily game and every country comparison page are free to use.