Mexico vs Puerto Rico

Mexico is 216 times larger than Puerto Rico — 1,964,375 against 9,104 km². Mexico is 41 times more populous than Puerto Rico — 131,946,900 against 3,184,835 people.

Side by side

Population density

Puerto Rico is 5.2 times more densely populated than Mexico — 350 against 67 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 Mexican peso and the United States dollar.
• Mexico spans 4 time zones, so "local time" there is not a single answer.

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.

Puerto Rico

The Puerto Rico Trench off the north coast reaches about 8,400 m, the deepest point in the Atlantic Ocean. El Yunque is the only tropical rainforest in the United States National Forest system. Mosquito Bay on Vieques is the brightest bioluminescent bay in the world, lit by dinoflagellates in the water.

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.