United Kingdom vs United States

United States is 40 times larger than United Kingdom — 9,833,517 against 243,610 km². United States is 4.9 times more populous than United Kingdom — 341,784,857 against 69,487,000 people.

Side by side

Population density

United Kingdom is 8.2 times more densely populated than United States — 285 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 — United Kingdom on the left, United States on the right.
• Different currencies: the British pound and the United States dollar.
• United States spans 6 time zones, so "local time" there is not a single answer.
• Different continents — Europe and North America.

United Kingdom

Made up of Great Britain, the north-east of Ireland and around 6,000 smaller islands. No point in the UK is more than about 113 km from the sea. Ben Nevis, the highest point, is 1,345 m, which is modest — but the country has around 31,000 km of coastline once every inlet is counted.

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.