Canada vs United States

Canada is slightly larger, by 1.5% — 9,984,670 against 9,833,517 km². United States is 8.2 times more populous than Canada — 341,784,857 against 41,651,653 people.

Side by side

Population density

United States is 8.3 times more densely populated than Canada — 35 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 United States dollar.
• United States 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.

United States

Third or fourth largest country in the world depending on how China's area is counted. It spans six standard time zones across the fifty states, from UTC-10 in Hawaii to UTC-5 on the east coast. Death Valley holds the highest reliably recorded air temperature on Earth, 56.7 °C in 1913, and is 86 m below sea level; Denali, 5,500 km away in Alaska, is 6,190 m.

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.