Shanghai
6,341 km²
Tokyo
2,194 km²
City Map Compare lets you put two cities side by side on synchronized maps so you can see, at a glance, exactly how their footprints compare. Most online maps only show one city at a time, and statistics like "2,194 km²" or "468 mi²" rarely give you a real sense of scale. By locking both maps to the same zoom level, this tool turns abstract numbers into something you can actually see — Tokyo's sprawling metro overlaid against New York's tighter grid, or Paris tucked neatly inside Greater London.
The tool currently covers 97 major cities across six continents, with verified data on administrative area, metropolitan extent, population, density, climate, elevation, and major transit systems. Every city page is built from the same dataset that powers the side-by-side comparisons, so you can move fluidly between exploring a single city and putting it next to another. There is no signup, no paywall, and no mobile app to install — everything runs in your browser using OpenStreetMap data, which means it works on any device with a modern web browser.
Whether you are a traveler trying to gauge how walkable a destination really is, a student writing a paper on urban density, a designer referencing real-world scale, or just someone curious whether your hometown is bigger than you thought — the side-by-side view gives you an honest visual answer in seconds. Pick two cities from the selectors above to begin, or jump straight into one of the popular comparisons listed further down this page.
Use the search selectors at the top of each map to choose any two of our 97 cities, or browse the popular pairings below.
Both maps stay at the exact same zoom level. Pan or zoom one map and the other follows automatically — guaranteeing a fair, scale-accurate comparison.
Drop pins to measure straight-line distances, capture a screenshot with the share button, or open a live session to compare locations with a friend in real time.
General-purpose mapping apps are optimized for finding places, not comparing them. Switching between two tabs always loses the scale, and screenshots can never be compared honestly because the zoom levels drift apart. City Map Compare solves a single, narrow problem: it shows two places at the same scale, on the same screen, with the same projection, so the visual comparison is genuinely accurate. Every feature on the page — the city selectors, the synchronized zoom, the marker tool, the screenshot capture, the live shared sessions — exists to make that one comparison faster and more useful.
Both maps are locked to the same zoom level using the Web Mercator projection used by most online maps. When you zoom in on one city, the other map zooms to the identical scale automatically, so a kilometer on the left map covers the same number of pixels as a kilometer on the right. This is the only honest way to visually compare city sizes.
Administrative area figures come from the official municipal boundaries of each city, sourced from government statistics offices and verified against UN Habitat and World Bank datasets. Population numbers reflect the most recent census or official mid-year estimates. Both administrative area and the wider metropolitan extent are tracked separately, since the two can differ dramatically — for example, Tokyo's 23 wards cover 627 km² but the broader Greater Tokyo Area exceeds 13,500 km².
You can pick any two of the 97cities currently in our database, which span all six inhabited continents and include most major metros. We are steadily adding more cities — if there is one you would like to see, the underlying map itself works for any location, you just won't see it in the searchable list yet.
Yes. The tool is completely free, requires no signup, and works entirely in your browser. Map tiles are served by OpenStreetMap contributors, and the project is built and maintained as a passion project, not a commercial service.
Yes — the layout adapts to phone and tablet screens, with the two maps stacking vertically on narrow viewports while still keeping their zoom levels synchronized. For the most detailed comparisons a laptop or desktop screen is more comfortable, but any modern mobile browser works.
Browse all 97 cities — area, population, and size facts for every city in our database.