Greenland is enormous: about 2.16 million square kilometers in total area, making it the world’s largest island that is not a continent.

Basic size facts

  • Total area: about 2,166,000 km² (roughly 836,000 square miles).
  • It stretches about 1,660 miles (2,670 km) north to south and more than 650 miles (1,050 km) across at its widest point.
  • Around 80% of Greenland is covered by the Greenland Ice Sheet, leaving only a relatively small ice‑free coastal fringe.

How that compares

  • Greenland is over three times the size of Texas.
  • It is smaller than Australia , which is a bit more than 3.5 times larger than Greenland.
  • Greenland is roughly one‑sixth the size of the United States by area.
  • Africa, despite how it looks on many maps, is about 14 times larger than Greenland.

Why maps make it look bigger

  • Common world maps (Mercator projection) stretch areas near the poles , making Greenland look almost Africa‑sized even though it is far smaller.
  • On a projection that preserves area (like Gall–Peters or equal‑area tools online), Greenland appears much smaller than people expect, which often surprises viewers and fuels online discussions and memes about its “true size.”

TL;DR: Greenland is about 2.16 million km² , huge for an island and larger than many countries combined, but still far smaller than continents like Africa or even Australia.

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