Mexico vs Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia is slightly larger, by 9.4% — 2,149,690 against 1,964,375 km². Mexico is 3.6 times more populous than Saudi Arabia — 131,946,900 against 36,973,555 people.

Side by side

Population density

Mexico is 3.9 times more densely populated than Saudi Arabia — 67 against 17 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 Saudi riyal.
• Mexico spans 4 time zones, so "local time" there is not a single answer.
• Different continents — North America and Asia.

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.

Saudi Arabia

The Rub' al Khali, the Empty Quarter, is the largest continuous sand desert in the world at about 650,000 km² — bigger than France. Saudi Arabia has no permanent rivers or lakes at all, which is true of only a handful of countries. It holds roughly a sixth of the world's proven oil reserves.

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.