Ecuador vs Mexico

Mexico is 6.9 times larger than Ecuador — 1,964,375 against 283,561 km². Mexico is 7.2 times more populous than Ecuador — 131,946,900 against 18,289,896 people.

Side by side

Population density

Mexico is slightly more densely populated, by 4.1% — 67 against 65 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 United States dollar and the Mexican peso.
• Mexico spans 4 time zones, so "local time" there is not a single answer.
• Different continents — South America and North America.

Ecuador

The summit of Chimborazo is the point on the Earth's surface farthest from the centre of the planet — about 2 km farther out than Everest — because the equatorial bulge lifts it. The Galápagos, 900 km offshore, are volcanic islands whose isolated species shaped Darwin's thinking. Ecuador is the smallest Andean country but holds a comparable share of the range's biodiversity.

Mexico

Mexico has the fourth-highest count of vertebrate and plant species of any country, and more reptile species than anywhere else. Chicxulub, under the northern Yucatán, is the roughly 180 km crater left by the asteroid impact 66 million years ago. The Sistema Sac Actun beneath the same peninsula is the longest known underwater cave system in the world, over 370 km surveyed.

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.