MapFight lets you compare the size of two places by overlaying one on top of the other. Pick a country, state or city, pick another, and it tells you how many times bigger one is than the other while showing them at true scale.
Why it is fun
Most of us learned geography from Mercator maps, which stretch everything near the poles. That is why Greenland looks about as big as Africa on a classroom wall map, when Africa is actually around 14 times larger. MapFight fixes that by drawing both shapes at their real size.
What you can compare
- Countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas.
- US states, like Texas against France or Alaska against half of Europe.
- Regions and cities, for a sense of how big your home town really is.
- Pages for Browse, Dataset, Ideas and FAQs if you want suggestions.
It is a static site, it loads fast and there is nothing to sign up for. Expect to lose twenty minutes to it.
Why I saved it: the fastest way to settle an argument about which country is bigger.