New Zealand vs United States

United States is 37 times larger than New Zealand — 9,833,517 against 268,838 km². United States is 64 times more populous than New Zealand — 341,784,857 against 5,324,700 people.

Side by side

Population density

United States is 1.8 times more densely populated than New Zealand — 35 against 20 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 — New Zealand on the left, United States on the right.
• Different currencies: the New Zealand dollar and the United States dollar.
• United States spans 6 time zones, so "local time" there is not a single answer.
• Different continents — Oceania and North America.

New Zealand

Two main islands and around 600 smaller ones, roughly 1,600 km long. New Zealand broke away from Gondwana about 80 million years ago and had no land mammals except bats until people arrived, which is why so many of its birds are flightless. The Southern Alps run most of the South Island and reach 3,724 m at Aoraki / Mount Cook.

United States

Third or fourth largest country in the world depending on how China's area is counted. It spans six standard time zones across the fifty states, from UTC-10 in Hawaii to UTC-5 on the east coast. Death Valley holds the highest reliably recorded air temperature on Earth, 56.7 °C in 1913, and is 86 m below sea level; Denali, 5,500 km away in Alaska, is 6,190 m.

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.