Costa Rica vs New Zealand

New Zealand is 5.3 times larger than Costa Rica — 268,838 against 51,100 km². New Zealand is slightly more populous, by 3.3% — 5,324,700 against 5,152,950 people.

Side by side

Population density

Costa Rica is 5.1 times more densely populated than New Zealand — 101 against 20 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

• They drive on opposite sides — Costa Rica on the right, New Zealand on the left.
• Different currencies: the Costa Rican colón and the New Zealand dollar.
• New Zealand spans 2 time zones, so "local time" there is not a single answer.
• Different continents — North America and Oceania.

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.

New Zealand

Two main islands and around 600 smaller ones, roughly 1,600 km long. New Zealand broke away from Gondwana about 80 million years ago and had no land mammals except bats until people arrived, which is why so many of its birds are flightless. The Southern Alps run most of the South Island and reach 3,724 m at Aoraki / Mount Cook.

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.