Canada vs Costa Rica

Canada is 195 times larger than Costa Rica — 9,984,670 against 51,100 km². Canada is 8.1 times more populous than Costa Rica — 41,651,653 against 5,152,950 people.

Side by side

Population density

Costa Rica is 24 times more densely populated than Canada — 101 against 4 people per km². Density is where area and population interact, and it often reverses the impression the headline figures give — a large country with a small population can feel emptier than a small crowded one by an enormous margin.

Practical differences

• Different currencies: the Canadian dollar and the Costa Rican colón.
• Canada spans 6 time zones, so "local time" there is not a single answer.

Canada

The second-largest country in the world by total area, and the longest coastline of any — about 202,000 km, more than the rest of the world put together. Canada holds more lake area than every other country combined, and something over two million lakes. Its border with the United States is the longest between any two countries at 8,891 km.

Costa Rica

Costa Rica covers about 0.03 percent of the Earth's surface but holds roughly five percent of its known species. More than a quarter of the country is protected, forest cover has roughly doubled since the 1980s, and it runs on close to 100 percent renewable electricity most years. It has around sixty volcanoes, six of them active.

Neutral facts only. Nothing here addresses politics, government, economics or which country is preferable in any respect — population is the one figure that dates, and it carries its year.