Australia is a bit smaller than the United States in land area, but not by as much as most people think.

Quick Scoop: Size at a Glance

  • Australia: about 7.68 million km² (around 2.97 million square miles).
  • United States (including Alaska and Hawaii): about 9.15 million km² (around 3.53 million square miles).
  • That means the U.S. is roughly 19–20% larger in total land area than Australia.

Put simply: if the continental U.S. is your mental yardstick, Australia is almost that big, just somewhat smaller and more compact in shape.

Side‑by‑Side Feel

If you could slide Australia over a map of the United States:

  • It would stretch from roughly the West Coast to somewhere around the Midwest/Atlantic, depending on alignment, covering most of the lower 48 in width and height.
  • Excluding Alaska and Hawaii, the difference in area becomes less dramatic, and the two feel “roughly similar” in scale on a basic road‑trip or flight‑time intuition level.

A common reaction when people see an overlay is surprise: Australia is far bigger than its shrunken look on many world maps suggests.

Why Maps Trick Your Brain

Many of the world maps you see use the Mercator projection, which:

  • Stretches landmasses near the poles (like Greenland, parts of Canada, northern U.S.) and
  • Makes mid‑latitude countries like Australia appear smaller than they really are compared to high‑latitude places.

So your eyes may have learned that “Australia is medium‑sized,” when in reality it is one of the largest countries on Earth.

Extra Context: Population vs. Space

Another twist that shapes our perception:

  • Australia: over 25 million people spread over that huge area, giving a very low average population density.
  • United States: well over 320 million people across its larger landmass, so many more people in only modestly more space.

That’s why Australia can feel “empty” or wide‑open compared to the U.S., even though the two are in the same “giant country” league by size.

TL;DR: When you ask “how big is Australia compared to the United States” , think “almost as big, just a bit smaller”—the U.S. wins on raw area, but not by a huge margin.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.