California vs UK size comparison

Every way to compare California and UK

Size depends on what you count. Total area includes lakes, rivers and coastal water; land area leaves them out. Every row below uses the same published sources.

How much bigger is California than the UK?

California covers 163,695 sq mi (423,967 sq km). The UK covers 94,058 sq mi (243,610 sq km). That makes California 1.74 times the size of the UK, or 74 percent larger. Put the other way, the UK is 57 percent of the size of California.

The difference is 180,357 sq km (69,636 sq mi), about the size of Missouri (180,540 sq km). For a US reference point, the UK is closest in total area to Michigan, at 250,487 sq km.

Population: California vs UK

The UK has more people: 68,751,311 against 39,431,263 for California, 74 percent more. Per square kilometer of total area, California has 93.0 people and the UK 282.2.

Why the two look different on most world maps

Web maps and many classroom maps use the Mercator projection, which keeps shapes and directions true but enlarges areas away from the equator. The enlargement grows with latitude: an area at latitude φ is drawn about 1 / cos²(φ) times its size compared with the same area at the equator.

California is centered near 37° N, where Mercator inflates areas about 1.6 times. The UK is centered near 54° N, where the factor is about 2.9. So on a Mercator map California looks roughly 0.9 times the size of the UK, against 1.74 in reality. This uses each shape's center, so treat it as a rough guide.

The outlines at the top of this page use a Lambert azimuthal equal-area projection centered on each shape, so their drawn areas compare the same way as the published figures. To drag any country across a map yourself, use the country size comparison tool.

More about California and UK

The UK lies far to the north of California. London, at about 51.5° N, is farther north than any point in the lower 48 states.

The UK has more people than California on a smaller area, so it is about three times as densely populated.

Sources and definitions

California: 423,967 sq km total, 403,466 sq km land, from the Census Bureau's state area measurements.

UK: 243,610 sq km total, 241,930 sq km land, from the CIA World Factbook. England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, including Shetland and Rockall.

The CIA stopped publishing the World Factbook in February 2026. Figures here come from its final edition, read from a public mirror of the data, and will not change unless another official source replaces them. Outlines come from Natural Earth (via world-atlas) and Census cartographic boundary files, and are simplified for drawing; the numbers never come from the outlines.