What do the colours of the Ecuador flag mean?

Yellow: abundance, crops and sunshine. Blue: the sea and the sky. Red: the blood of those who fought for independence.

How do you tell the Ecuador flag from the Colombia one?

Colombia has no coat of arms and is squarer at 2:3.

When was the Ecuador flag adopted?

The current design dates from 1900, and its official ratio is 1:2.

The flag of Ecuador

A yellow band filling the top half, with equal blue and red bands below, and the national coat of arms centred over all three.

Ratio 1:2 · current design adopted 1900

Ecuador and Colombia share identical band proportions — a double-height yellow over equal blue and red — so the coat of arms is the only reliable difference, and it is a busy one: a condor above an oval containing Chimborazo, the Guayas river and a steamship, framed by fasces and four zodiac signs for the months of the 1845 revolution. The civil flag without arms is legal and is what makes the confusion with Colombia acute. The 1:2 ratio is longer than Colombia's 2:3, which is a second tell. Ecuador adopted the arrangement in 1860 and the modern arms in 1900.

Flags it gets confused with

Flag	How to tell them apart
Colombia	Colombia has no coat of arms and is squarer at 2:3.
Venezuela	Venezuela has three equal bands and eight white stars.

What the colours mean

Flag laws usually specify a Pantone chip, a CMYK mix or just a colour name. Converting any of those to sRGB is lossy, which is why published hex values disagree.

The symbols on it

What	What it stands for
Condor	Power and vigilance; wings spread over the shield
Mount Chimborazo and a steamship	The nation's highest peak and the first steamship built on the Pacific coast

Ratio: 1:2
Current design adopted: 1900
Colours: yellow, blue, red

Common questions

What does the flag of Ecuador look like?: A yellow band filling the top half, with equal blue and red bands below, and the national coat of arms centred over all three.
What do the colours of the Ecuador flag mean?: Yellow: abundance, crops and sunshine. Blue: the sea and the sky. Red: the blood of those who fought for independence.
How do you tell the Ecuador flag from the Colombia one?: Colombia has no coat of arms and is squarer at 2:3.
When was the Ecuador flag adopted?: The current design dates from 1900, and its official ratio is 1:2.

Ecuador Capital, area, population and currency
The flag of Colombia Routinely mistaken for this one
The flag of Venezuela Routinely mistaken for this one
Every flag with yellow in it
The flag of China Ratio 2:3
The flag of Brazil Ratio 7:10
The flag of Spain Ratio 2:3
The flag of Ukraine Ratio 2:3
The flag of Romania Ratio 2:3
The flag of Sweden Ratio 5:8
The flag of Vietnam Ratio 2:3
The flag of Belgium Ratio 13:15

Sources

The World Factbook — Central Intelligence Agency (Public domain (US Government))

How these figures are compiled and checked