South Africa vs United States

United States is 8.1 times larger than South Africa — 9,833,517 against 1,219,090 km². United States is 5.3 times more populous than South Africa — 341,784,857 against 64,747,319 people.

Side by side

Population density

South Africa is 1.5 times more densely populated than United States — 53 against 35 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 — South Africa on the left, United States on the right.
• Different currencies: the South African rand and the United States dollar.
• United States spans 6 time zones, so "local time" there is not a single answer.
• Different continents — Africa and North America.

South Africa

One of only a handful of countries with more than one capital, and the only one with three. The Vredefort Dome south-west of Johannesburg is the largest verified impact crater on Earth, about 300 km across and 2 billion years old. The Cape Floral Region packs roughly 9,000 plant species into a small corner of the country, most of them found nowhere else.

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.