India vs Iran

India is 2.0 times larger than Iran — 3,287,263 against 1,648,195 km². India is 16 times more populous than Iran — 1,463,865,525 against 92,417,681 people.

Side by side

Population density

India is 7.9 times more densely populated than Iran — 445 against 56 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 — India on the left, Iran on the right.
• Different currencies: the Indian rupee and the Iranian rial.

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.

Iran

The Lut Desert has recorded the highest land surface temperatures ever measured from orbit, around 80 °C. Iran is largely a high plateau ringed by mountains — the Zagros and the Alborz, where Damavand reaches 5,610 m, the highest volcano in Asia. The qanat, an underground irrigation tunnel, has been used here for around 3,000 years.

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.