Largest and Smallest US States by Area: All 50 Ranked

Alaska is the largest state in the United States, with 665,725 square miles (1,724,220 km²) of total area, of which 571,409 square miles is land. It is 2.5 times the size of Texas, the second-largest state, and accounts for 17.5% of the total area of the 50 states and DC.

The rest of the top five by total area are Texas (268,599 sq mi), California (163,694), Montana (147,043) and New Mexico (121,593). Nine of the ten largest are in the Census Bureau's West region; Texas, in the South region, is the exception.

Alaska is larger than Texas, California and Montana combined (579,336 sq mi). By land area alone the margin is smaller, 2.2 times Texas, because about one-seventh of Alaska's total is water.

Rhode Island is the smallest state, with 1,545 square miles (4,002 km²) of total area and 1,034 square miles of land. About a third of its total area is water, including Narragansett Bay. Delaware (2,489 sq mi) and Connecticut (5,544 sq mi) are the next smallest.

The District of Columbia is smaller still at 68 square miles, but it is a federal district, not a state.

Alaska's total area is about 431 times Rhode Island's. You could fit the 14 smallest states inside Texas with room to spare. On a printable outline such as the Rhode Island blank map, the state fills the page; at the scale of the figure below it is a speck.

Total area includes inland water, coastal water and the parts of the Great Lakes inside each state's boundary. Population rank is from the Census Bureau's July 1, 2025 estimates, ranked among the 50 states.

Most lists rank states by total area, but some use land area, and a few states move a long way between the two:

• Michigan is 11th by total area but only 22nd by land, because 41.5% of it (40,101 sq mi) is Great Lakes water. No state has more water area except Alaska.
• Florida drops from 18th by total area to 26th by land, with 17,745 square miles of water.
• Hawaii has almost the same water share as Michigan, 41.5%, and falls from 43rd to 47th by land area.
• New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado are the driest: under half a percent of each is water.

When a question asks for the "biggest state", total area is the usual reading, and the answer is the same either way: Alaska first, Texas second, California third, Rhode Island last.

Stacking the smallest states up from the bottom, the 22 smallest states (Rhode Island through Arkansas) have a combined total area of 621,866 square miles, which still fits inside Alaska's 665,725. Adding the next state would overflow it.

Against the contiguous United States, Alaska is 21% as large: the 48 states and DC cover 3,126,089 square miles of total area. That is why maps that show Alaska as an inset box at the same size as Texas mislead in one direction, and Mercator web maps, which draw Alaska at well over half the size of the lower 48, mislead in the other.

The largest states by land area alone are Alaska (571,409 sq mi), Texas (261,259), California (155,860), Montana (145,550) and New Mexico (121,313); the same five as by total area. The smallest by land are Rhode Island (1,034 sq mi), Delaware (1,949), Connecticut (4,843), Hawaii (6,423) and New Jersey (7,355). Hawaii joins the bottom five because 41% of its total area is water.

For maps you can print and label, every state has a free outline on the blank maps pages, from the Alaska blank map down to Rhode Island.

Area and population rankings barely line up. Alaska is first by area and 48th by population. Wyoming, 10th by area, is last by population. New Jersey is 47th by area but 11th by population, which makes it the most densely populated state. Only California and Texas are in the top three of both lists.

Within states the contrast is just as sharp. Texas's largest county, Brewster County, covers 6,184 square miles with 9,458 residents, while Dallas County packs 2,661,397 people into 873 square miles.

For the full population ranking with growth since 2020 and density, see US states by population.

The figure above draws each state with the same equal-area projection centered on that state, so the outlines are directly comparable in size. Flat web maps exaggerate Alaska because they use the Mercator projection, which inflates areas far from the equator; at Alaska's latitudes areas are stretched four to five times more than at the equator, and three to four times more than Texas. An equal-area drawing shows the real ratio of about 2.5 to 1 against Texas.

For interactive versions, the Alaska vs Texas size comparison and the Texas vs California comparison overlay the shapes on a map, and the country size comparison tool lets you drag any country or state to another latitude and watch its projected size change.

You will often see Alaska listed at 665,384 square miles and Texas at 268,596. Those are the Census Bureau's 2010 State Area Measurements, which many reference works still copy. The figures in this article come from the 2026 Gazetteer, the Bureau's current file, computed from its current boundary database. The differences are small (Alaska +341 sq mi, Texas +3 sq mi) and do not change any rank at the top or bottom.

Other sources of disagreement:

• Land only vs total: a figure of about 570,000 square miles for Alaska is land area; 665,000 is total.
• Rounding and unit conversion: 1 square mile is 2.589988 km², and lists that convert rounded numbers drift by a few units.
• Generalized map files: areas measured from simplified boundary files, including the 1:10,000,000 files our maps use for display, come out slightly different from the official figures. Use the official numbers for anything that matters.