About
Greenland looks as big as Africa. In fact Africa is fourteen times larger. Antimercator.com lets you see it for yourself: pick a country, move it across the map and compare it with others at the same latitude.
Why maps deceive
Almost every world map you come across, and almost every map on the web, uses the Mercator projection, drawn by Gerardus Mercator in 1569 for navigation. It has one great strength: shapes and angles stay true, and a route on a constant bearing becomes a straight line. It also has a cost: to keep the meridians straight, the map stretches everything far from the equator.
At 60° latitude (Oslo, Helsinki, Anchorage) distances are doubled and areas quadrupled; at 75° areas are fifteen times their real size. The closer you get to the poles, the more the map exaggerates, until the poles themselves no longer fit.
How to use it
- Pick a country: click it on the map, or type its name in the search field. A coloured copy appears; a dashed outline stays in its original place.
- Move it: drag it wherever you like. Towards the poles it swells, towards the equator it shrinks, exactly like the countries around it on the map. Its real area never changes: only how much the map enlarges it.
- Compare: up to eight countries at once. The panel shows each one's area and its ratio to the reference country; the card (the “i” next to the name) adds population, density, flag and sources.
- Share: the “Share” button creates a short link and a QR code. Whoever opens it finds the same countries in the same places: handy for Moodle or for showing in class. Links never expire.
- Start over: the house below + and − brings the map back to the starting view; “Remove all” clears the comparison.
Where the data comes from
Areas and population are those published by the World Bank; where missing, those from Wikidata. They update themselves every month, and every figure in the card states its source and year. Country outlines come from Natural Earth, which follows de facto borders: disputed territories can be picked separately.
A moved country carries its main territory with it: distant islands and territories (Hawaii for the United States, French Guiana for France) stay where they are. The areas in the card, however, are the official figures for the whole country.
Sources and licences
- World Bank, World Development Indicators — area and population (CC BY 4.0)
- Wikidata — country names, missing figures, links to Wikipedia (CC0)
- Natural Earth — country outlines (public domain)
- Protomaps — base map, with data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)
- MapLibre GL JS — map rendering (BSD)
- flag-icons — flags (MIT)
- qrcode-generator — QR codes (MIT)
- Noto Sans — label font (SIL Open Font License)
Who makes it
Antimercator.com is a project by Pixelized.ch Sagl, Lugano, Switzerland. Reports, data errors and suggestions: info@pixelized.ch. How the data of people using the site is handled is explained on the Privacy page.