India vs Indonesia

India is 1.7 times larger than Indonesia — 3,287,263 against 1,904,569 km². India is 5.1 times more populous than Indonesia — 1,463,865,525 against 285,721,236 people.

Side by side

Population density

India is 3.0 times more densely populated than Indonesia — 445 against 150 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 Indian rupee and the Indonesian rupiah.
• Indonesia spans 3 time zones, so "local time" there is not a single answer.

India

The most populous country in the world since 2023. The Ganges-Brahmaputra system drains the southern Himalaya into the largest delta on Earth, and Mawsynram and Cherrapunji in Meghalaya are the wettest inhabited places on record, with roughly 11 m of rain a year. Mumbai is the largest individual municipality; the Delhi urban agglomeration, which contains the capital, is larger still at around 33 million.

Indonesia

The largest archipelago in the world: official surveys count more than 17,000 islands, of which around 6,000 are inhabited, spread over 5,100 km of ocean. Indonesia sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire and has about 130 active volcanoes, more than any other country. It also holds more of the world's remaining tropical peatland than anywhere except the Congo basin.

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.