Each of 81 New York City figures lands within 11 percent of a place or thing elsewhere in the world, and 69 of them compare like with like.
Each line sets one New York City figure against a place or thing that comes in at about the same number. Of the 81 pairings, 69 compare the same measure on both sides, such as subway riders against another city's subway riders; nine match a population and three a length. The matches reach 26 countries, cite 131 source pages and sit a median 3.3 percent from the New York City figure. Click any figure to open its source, or any line for both quotes and what a blind fact-checker made of it.
Colour is the realm. Hover a mark to tie it to New York City and click it to open that pairing. Press the slash key to jump to the search box; inside a pairing, the arrow keys move to the next one.
Each line pairs a New York City figure from an official source with a comparison figure from an official or national statistical source. Both figures, the year each refers to, the exact quote from each source page and the ratio between them are listed on the methodology page, along with the definitions that do not line up perfectly. Figures are the latest published as of September 2026; where the two sides refer to different years, the methodology says so.
And please read this AI caution. The concept, the choice of figures and the layout were the author's (a human). The research, coding and file handling were done by Anthropic's Claude Code under close direction. Every number on this page was required to come from a fetched source page with a verbatim quote, and a second, independent pass re-checked each pairing blind against its sources. Risks of AI error remain. If you spot a wrong number, a stale figure or a better match, the author would like to hear it.
Built by Josh Greenman. Map: Natural Earth via world-atlas.