What Percentage of the World Have You Visited?
Divide the countries you have visited by 195 and you have the figure most travel maps show. Measure the same trips by land area and the answer can be many times bigger or smaller. Here are both sums, and when each one is fair.
To work out what percentage of the world you have visited, divide the number of countries you have been to by 195 and multiply by 100. Twenty countries is 10.3%. Fifty is 25.6%. One hundred is 51.3%, just over half.
The 195 is the 193 member states of the United Nations plus its two observer states, the Holy See and Palestine. The world map does the sum for you as you tick countries, and shows the count beside it.
The quick table
| Countries visited | Share of the 195 | What the world map shows |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0.51% | <1% |
| 5 | 2.6% | 3% |
| 10 | 5.1% | 5% |
| 20 | 10.3% | 10% |
| 25 | 12.8% | 13% |
| 30 | 15.4% | 15% |
| 40 | 20.5% | 21% |
| 50 | 25.6% | 26% |
| 75 | 38.5% | 38% |
| 100 | 51.3% | 51% |
| 150 | 76.9% | 77% |
| 195 | 100% | 100% |
You need 20 countries to pass 10% and 98 to pass 50%.
The map rounds to a whole number, because “13%” is easier to say than “12.8%”. For a single country it shows “<1%” rather than 0%, and it never shows 100% until every one of the 195 is marked.
It is a share of countries, not of the planet
Counting this way treats every country as one. Vatican City counts exactly as much as Russia. So the same percentage can describe very different amounts of travel, and measured by land area the picture changes completely.
The table sets the two measures side by side, using the World Bank’s land areas for 2022.
| Where you have been | Countries | Share of the 195 | Land area (km²) | Share of the world’s land |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Russia alone | 1 | 0.51% | 16,376,870 | 12.6% |
| Canada, the United States and Mexico | 3 | 1.5% | 19,880,070 | 15.3% |
| France, Spain, Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom | 5 | 2.6% | 1,925,674 | 1.5% |
| Ten Caribbean island countries | 10 | 5.1% | 207,348 | 0.16% |
| The ten largest countries | 10 | 5.1% | 70,542,680 | 54.4% |
Read the first and fourth rows together. By country count, ten Caribbean islands score ten times higher than Russia. By land, Russia is about 79 times larger than all ten put together.
Ten countries hold more than half the land
| Rank | Country | Land area (km²) | Share of the world’s land |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Russia | 16,376,870 | 12.6% |
| 2 | China | 9,388,210 | 7.2% |
| 3 | United States | 9,147,420 | 7.0% |
| 4 | Canada | 8,788,700 | 6.8% |
| 5 | Brazil | 8,358,140 | 6.4% |
| 6 | Australia | 7,692,020 | 5.9% |
| 7 | India | 2,973,190 | 2.3% |
| 8 | Argentina | 2,736,690 | 2.1% |
| 9 | Kazakhstan | 2,699,700 | 2.1% |
| 10 | Algeria | 2,381,740 | 1.8% |
| All ten | 70,542,680 | 54.4% |
Ten countries are 5.1% of the list of 195 and 54.4% of the world’s land. These figures are land only: they leave out lakes and rivers. That is why Canada is fourth here, behind Russia, China and the United States, although it is usually ranked second in the world by total area.
Which number should you use?
- Use the country count when you want one simple number to compare with friends. It is the convention, and everybody can check it. Say it with its list: “23 of 195”.
- Use land area if what you care about is how much of the map is coloured in. Know what it rewards: one stopover in a very large country moves the number more than a year of island-hopping.
- Neither tells you how much you have seen. A weekend in Toronto colours all of Canada on a world map, by either measure. The honest fix is to go a level down. On the Canada map you tick the cities, parks and landmarks you have been to inside each province, and each province gets its own percentage.
What WorldTripMap shows
- World map: your count out of 195 and its percentage, how many of the six inhabited continents you have reached, and territories such as Greenland on a line of their own. It does not show a land-area share.
- Canada map: the share of the 13 provinces and territories you have marked, the size of those provinces as a share of Canada’s area (labelled as size, not as “seen”), and the percentage of listed places you have ticked.
Every figure on the site says what it is a share of. The rules are set out on the data and methods page.
A fair way to say it
“I have been to 23 of the 195 countries, about 12%.” A number, the list it is measured against, and nothing rounded up.
If you have not counted yet, the countries checklist lists all 195 by continent. If you are unsure whether a layover counts, see what counts as visiting a country. And once the number is on a map, how to print a travel map poster explains how to get it onto a wall.
Sources
- Land area (sq. km), indicator AG.LND.TOTL.K2, World Bank, from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Checked October 11, 2026.
- About us (membership of the United Nations), United Nations. Checked October 11, 2026.
- Non-member States, United Nations. Checked October 11, 2026.
Spotted something out of date? Tell us and we will check it against the sources and correct it.