How big is a country, which countries does it border, and how long is each of those borders? This map answers all three with one click. Every country is outlined on a world map from Natural Earth, the public-domain map data used in atlases, newsrooms and GIS software. Click one, or choose it from the list, and it turns green while its neighbours turn orange. The panel shows the area, the full outline split into land borders and coastline, how many neighbouring countries it has and how many separate polygons, mainland and islands, make up its territory. Below that, every neighbour is listed with the length of the shared border, longest first; click a neighbour to jump to it, which makes it easy to follow a chain of borders across a continent. The share link opens the same country again, the unit switch changes everything between kilometres and miles, and the export buttons save the detailed outline as GeoJSON for GIS and web maps or as KML for Google Earth, with the area and border figures stored as attributes.
How to use it
- Click a country on the map, or choose it from the list above the map.
- Read its area, land borders, coastline and the number of neighbours in the panel.
- Click a neighbour in the list to move to it; neighbours are shown in orange on the map.
- Switch between kilometres and miles, copy the share link, or download the outline as GeoJSON or KML.
How accurate is it?
Where the outlines come from
The borders are Natural Earth's admin-0 countries, version 4.1, in the TopoJSON edition of the world-atlas package. The map draws the 1:50 million version, which is light enough to load quickly, and every figure is calculated from the more detailed 1:10 million version, which is also what you download. Natural Earth shows borders as they are on the ground, so a territory controlled by one country but claimed by another is drawn with the country that controls it, and a few disputed areas such as Northern Cyprus and Somaliland are separate shapes.
How the figures are calculated
Areas and lengths are measured on the WGS84 ellipsoid with GeographicLib, not on a flat map, so a country near the pole is not inflated the way it looks on a web map. Areas match official figures closely: Denmark comes out at 42,680 km² against an official 42,943 km², Italy at 301,196 km² against 301,340 km². A land border is any stretch of outline that two countries share; everything else is counted as coastline. The cut along the 180° meridian, where Russia and Fiji are split in the data, is not counted.
Why border and coastline lengths are shorter than official figures
A line on a 1:10 million map leaves out the small bends that a surveyed border or a detailed coastline has, and the length of a wiggly line grows the more detail you measure. France and Spain share 570 km in this data against an official 623 km, and Denmark's coastline measures 1,176 km at 1:110 million, 2,440 km at 1:50 million and 4,384 km at 1:10 million, while the CIA World Factbook gives 7,314 km. Use the lengths to compare countries with each other, not as survey values.
Good to know
Very small countries
The 1:10 million outlines are stored on a grid of about 400 metres, which is far too coarse for Monaco, Vatican City or Gibraltar. The tool warns when a country is under 1,000 km²; use official figures for those.
Overseas territories are counted with the country
Natural Earth includes French Guiana, Réunion and the other overseas regions in France, and Alaska and Hawaii in the United States, so their areas and coastlines are part of the total. Greenland and the Faroe Islands are separate from Denmark, as they are in most statistics.
Lakes and ice shelves
Large lakes inside a country, and the parts of lakes such as Lake Victoria on each side of a border, are counted in its area, as in most official land-and-water figures. Antarctica's outline follows the grounded ice, so the floating ice shelves are not in its area.
Frequently asked questions
How do I see which countries border a country?
Click the country on the map or choose it from the list. Its neighbours turn orange on the map and are listed in the panel with the length of each shared border, longest first.
Which country has the most neighbours?
China and Russia, with 14 neighbouring countries each. In Natural Earth, China also borders Hong Kong and the disputed Siachen Glacier, which are separate shapes, so the list shows 16. Russia's longest land border is with Kazakhstan.
How accurate is the area of a country?
For most countries it is within about 1 % of the official land and water area, because it is calculated on the ellipsoid from detailed 1:10 million outlines. Small countries under 1,000 km² can be far off, and the tool warns about them.
Can I download a country outline?
Yes. The GeoJSON and KML buttons save the detailed 1:10 million outline of the selected country with its name, ISO code, area, land border and coastline length as attributes. Natural Earth is public domain, so you can use it freely.
Why is the coastline shorter than the official figure?
Coastline length depends on how much detail you measure: a more detailed map follows more bays and inlets and gives a longer line. The outlines here are simplified to a 1:10 million scale, so coastlines come out shorter than survey values.
Something wrong or missing? E-mail [email protected] and it will be fixed.