Population density
- World median
- 95.3
- across 215 countries, 2023
- Latest observation
- 2023
- Source updated
- 13 Jul 2026
- CountryAtlas refreshed
- 11 Sep 2026
- Snapshot 20260911T072322Z
World map
One value per country for the selected year. Hatched = no data.
No data available
Trend
Aggregate across the countries of a group, year by year. Computed by CountryAtlas from country values — no published aggregate is used.
Not enough countries to aggregate this indicator for World.
Highest and lowest
The five leaders and the five trailing countries, 2023.
Compare countries
Pick up to five countries. Defaults to the three largest economies with data.
No series for the selected countries.
Definition
- Definition
- Unit
- people per km² of land area (/km²)
- Frequency
- Annual
- Aggregation
- none · No direction
- Valid range
- 0 – 100000
Sources & provenance
Every value on this page comes from one of these series, chosen per country by priority.
- Priority #1Open at source216 countries · 12,320 obs. · → 2023 · CC BY 4.0
Population density is midyear population divided by land area in square kilometers. Population is based on the de facto definition of population, which counts all residents regardless of legal status or citizenship--except for refugees not permanently settled in the country of asylum, who are generally considered part of the population of their country of origin. Land area is a country's total area, excluding area under inland water bodies, national claims to continental shelf, and exclusive economic zones. In most cases the definition of inland water bodies includes major rivers and lakes. Source: FAO population estimates, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), publisher: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO); World Bank population estimates, World Bank (WB), publisher: World Bank (WB)
Series-level selection: for each country the whole series comes from the highest-priority source that has any non-forecast value for it. If a lower-priority source is more than three years fresher, the freshest source wins instead. Non-chosen values are kept as alternatives, never discarded.
Countries without data
Typical reasons: the source does not survey small territories or micro-states; the statistical office reports with a lag of one to three years; the series is only compiled for member countries of the source organisation (OECD, EU, Eurostat); or a value exists but failed validation and is quarantined rather than shown.
Downloads & API
Every observation for this indicator, all countries and years, with provenance columns.
API example
One country, full history. Replace CAN by any ISO3 code or slug.
curl -s "https://www.countryatlas.co/api/v1/series?country=CAN&indicator=population-density" | jq '.series[0] | {country: .country.name, unit, last: .stats.last, source: .provenance.source_name}'