Look at a world map. I mean, the UK looks like a pretty decent size against America, right?
Wrong. That map’s lying to you. The Mercator projection makes countries close to the poles appear much larger than they are. The UK gets this boost because it’s further north.
Reality check. How big is America compared to the UK? You could fit the entire United Kingdom inside the US about 40 times over. Not twice. Not ten times. Forty times.
America spans roughly 3.8 million square miles. The UK? About 93,600 square miles total. That is all of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland added together. The whole thing.
The UK is about 2.5% the size of America. That’s it.
Individual States Are Bigger Than the Whole UK
The size of the UK compared to a US state gets really weird when you start looking at it. Texas alone is roughly 268,600 square miles. What is the size of the UK compared to Texas? You could put the UK inside Texas about three times.
Alaska is even nuttier at 665,400 square miles. You could squeeze the UK into Alaska roughly seven times. One state. Seven UKs.
How big is the UK compared to Florida? Florida is just over 65,800 square miles, so about 70% as big as the UK. Just one American state is nearly the size of an entire country with four nations in it.
California is almost exactly twice the size of the UK, at around 163,700 square miles. Montana’s around 147,000 square miles. New Mexico is about 121,600 square miles. All are larger than the entire United Kingdom.
Oregon’s bigger than the UK. Michigan’s nearly as big. The list goes on.
But Way More People Live in the UK
The population of the UK vs. US makes the whole thing turn on its head, though. The U.K. is home to about 67.8 million people who are packed into 93,600 square miles. America has a population of about 342 million people, spread across 3.8 million square miles.
The U.K. has about 725 people per square mile. America? Perhaps 90 people per square mile.
Texas is home to approximately 30 million people and covers a land area about three times that of the UK. The UK has more than double Texas’s population and one-third of the space. That is why British cities seem so cramped compared to American sprawl.
England by itself is home to roughly 56 million people in its mere 50,300 square miles. Montana has just over a million residents living in 147,000 square miles. Totally different worlds.
Why Americans and Brits Think About Distance Differently
Americans will think nothing of driving two and a half hours to go anywhere. That’s just Tuesday. You drive two and a half hours from London, and you’re pretty much out of England.
You can drive 12 hours in Texas and still be in Texas. The distance from El Paso to Houston is some 750 miles. That’s farther than the drive from the top of Scotland to the bottom of England.
In Britain, 100 miles is essentially a road trip. Americans treat 100 miles like running errands.
Whenever someone from the UK comes over to visit America, they’re always shocked by how spread out everything is. Cities are miles apart. Suburbs go on forever. Nothing’s walkable.
What This Actually Means
The size difference affects everything. America’s got way more varied landscapes because there’s just so much space. Deserts, mountains, beaches, plains, forests, swamps, and tundra. All in one country.
The UK’s got variety too, but it’s packed tighter. You can drive from the countryside to the city to the coast in a couple of hours. In America, you could drive for days and see nothing but farmland.
America’s got 7.67% of the world’s forests. The UK has 0.08%. America’s got nearly 9% of the world’s agricultural land. The UK has 0.36%.
More space means more natural resources. More oil, more minerals, more farmland. The UK has to import way more stuff because there’s not enough land to produce everything.
Economy Doesn’t Follow Size Though
Despite being way smaller, the UK’s economy isn’t 40 times smaller. The UK’s GDP is around $3.3 trillion. America’s is roughly $27 trillion. So America’s economy is about 8 times bigger, not 40 times.
Economic output doesn’t directly match land size. Population and productivity matter more. The UK packs a lot of economic activity into a small space.
Texas alone has a GDP around $2.4 trillion. If Texas were its own country, it’d have the 8th largest economy in the world. Bigger than Russia’s. One state.
California’s GDP is about $3.9 trillion. That’s bigger than the UK’s entire economy. Just California.
Maps Make It Worse
Those world maps you grew up with distort everything. The Mercator projection makes things near the equator look smaller, and things near the poles look bigger.
Greenland looks massive on those maps. In reality, it’s way smaller. Same with Russia. It looks gigantic, but it’s not as huge as the map suggests.
The UK benefits from this too. It’s further north than most of America, so it looks bigger on standard maps than it actually is.
Put the UK and America side by side on an equal-area map, and the size difference becomes obvious. The UK looks like a little island next to this massive country.
Living With These Differences
British people visiting America always mess up travel planning. They’ll try to visit New York, Miami, and LA in one week. That’s like planning to visit London, Athens, and Moscow in a week. Technically possible, but you’ll spend all your time travelling.
Americans visiting the UK do the opposite. They plan three days in London and think they need two weeks for the rest of the country. You can see a lot of the UK pretty quickly because it’s just not that big.
Americans are used to spreading out. Big houses, big yards, big cars, big roads. Space isn’t premium.
British homes are smaller because land is expensive. Gardens are smaller. Cars are smaller. Roads are narrower. When you’ve only got 93,600 square miles, you gotta use it efficiently.
Some Weird Comparisons
The drive from Seattle to Miami is about 3,300 miles. That’d be like driving from London to Iraq and back. Just to cross one country.
Montana alone is bigger than Germany. New Mexico’s bigger than Italy. Oregon’s bigger than the UK.
You could fit the UK into the Great Lakes with water left over. Lake Superior alone is about 31,700 square miles. That’s a third the size of the entire UK. One lake.
The drive across Texas takes longer than flying from London to Rome. Driving across one state takes longer than flying between two countries.
What It Comes Down To
How big is America compared to the UK? About 40 times bigger. The entire UK could fit inside America 40 times with room left over.
Individual states like Texas and Alaska are way bigger than the whole UK. Even Florida’s almost as big.
But size isn’t everything. The UK packs way more people into its space. Higher density means more concentrated economic activity, better public transit, and everything closer together.
Americans drive hours for anything. British people take trains everywhere because cities are closer. Different lifestyles of different sizes.
Next time you look at a map thinking the UK looks substantial, remember it’s mostly an illusion. America sprawls across nearly 4 million square miles, while the UK sits on less than 100,000.
Makes those “everything’s bigger in Texas” jokes hit different when Texas alone could swallow the UK almost three times over.
