Why This Map Looks Different: Equal Earth vs Mercator
Updated November 10, 2026
Most online maps use the Mercator projection, which enlarges land far from the equator: Greenland looks as large as Africa although Africa is about 14 times bigger. This site uses Equal Earth, an equal-area projection in which every country keeps its true share of the map.
What a projection is
A globe cannot be flattened without stretching something. A projection is a rule for where each point of the globe lands on paper, and every rule gives something up: shapes, areas, distances or directions.
Why Mercator misleads on a visited map
Mercator keeps compass directions straight, which made it the standard for sea navigation in the 16th century and, much later, for web maps that need to zoom into street level. The price is area. Land is stretched more and more toward the poles.
| Comparison | On a Mercator map | In reality |
|---|---|---|
| Greenland and Africa | About the same size | Africa is about 14 times larger |
| Russia and Africa | Russia looks roughly twice as large | Africa is nearly twice as large as Russia |
| Alaska and Mexico | Alaska looks much larger | Mexico is a little larger |
| Europe and South America | Similar | South America is nearly twice as large |
On a visited-countries map this distortion turns into a false impression. Colour Canada, Russia and the Nordic countries on Mercator and half the map lights up; colour the whole of Africa and it looks like less.
What Equal Earth does
Equal Earth was published in 2018 by Bojan Šavrič, Tom Patterson and Bernhard Jenny. It keeps areas correct everywhere, and it was designed to look familiar, with gently curved sides instead of the stretched or squashed shapes of older equal-area maps. Shapes near the poles are compressed sideways; that is the cost of keeping areas true.
When Mercator is still the right choice
For zooming into a city, following streets or navigating, Mercator and its web variant work well because local shapes and angles are preserved. For a picture of the whole world where the size of coloured areas carries meaning, an equal-area projection is the honest choice.
Other projections you may have seen
Mercator and Equal Earth are two of many. Most printed world maps of the last century used a compromise projection, which distorts everything a little instead of one thing a lot.
| Projection | Keeps areas true? | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Mercator (1569) | No | Sea charts and web maps |
| Mollweide (1805) | Yes | An ellipse, common in science maps |
| Gall-Peters (1855, 1973) | Yes | True areas with strongly stretched shapes |
| Robinson (1963) | No, a compromise | National Geographic world maps from 1988 to 1998 |
| Winkel Tripel (1921) | No, a compromise | National Geographic world maps since 1998 |
| Equal Earth (2018) | Yes | True areas with a familiar outline |
Compromise projections look pleasant and are a good choice for a wall map of physical geography. For a map whose message is how much of the world you have covered, any distortion of area changes the message, so an equal-area projection is the consistent choice. Among the equal-area options, Equal Earth keeps continents closest to the shapes people recognise.
You can test any world map in a few seconds. Find Greenland and compare it with Algeria, which is slightly larger in reality. If Greenland looks several times bigger, the map inflates the far north.
Try it on your own map
Questions and answers
- Why is Antarctica so stretched at the bottom?
- Every world map has to open the globe somewhere. Equal Earth keeps Antarctica's area correct, which spreads it into a long thin band along the bottom edge.
- Can I switch the map to Mercator?
- No. The map uses one projection so that the coloured share of the image stays truthful, on screen and in exports.
- Is Equal Earth free to use?
- Yes. The projection is in the public domain and is built into common mapping libraries.