Saudi Arabia vs United States

United States is 4.6 times larger than Saudi Arabia — 9,833,517 against 2,149,690 km². United States is 9.2 times more populous than Saudi Arabia — 341,784,857 against 36,973,555 people.

Side by side

Population density

United States is 2.0 times more densely populated than Saudi Arabia — 35 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 Saudi riyal and the United States dollar.
• United States spans 6 time zones, so "local time" there is not a single answer.
• Different continents — Asia and North America.

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.

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.