Largest Lakes in the World by Surface Area
About This Dataset
Largest Lakes in the World by Surface Area
This chart ranks the world's major lakes by the area of water they cover, in square kilometres. Surface area is what maps show, and it produces a different order from a ranking by the volume of water a lake actually holds.
Analysis
Caspian Sea is the largest by surface area at 371,000 square kilometres, 4.5 times Superior on 82,100. Comparing this order with the volume ranking is the useful part: a wide, shallow lake can cover enormous ground while holding relatively little water, and a narrow, deep one does the opposite. These 12 lakes cover 833,416 square kilometres in total, of which Caspian Sea alone accounts for 45%.
Key Findings
🏆
Caspian Sea leads in Surface area (square kilometres) with 371,000.
📊
Average Surface area (square kilometres): 69,451 · median: 32,311.
↔️
Gap: Caspian Sea is 15.1× larger than Winnipeg.
Data Insights
Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart
Methodology & source
- Data source
- Wikipedia - List of lakes by volume
- Coverage
- 12 entities · 12 observations
- Measure
- Surface area (square kilometres)
- Last updated
- 10 September 2026
- Compiled by
- The ANYSTAT team, from the source above
How the figures are calculated
- Values are shown as reported by the source. Nothing is rescaled, rebased or converted — the only changes are thousand separators and decimals shown to two places.
- Entities are ranked highest-first on their value.
Data Sources & References
All external sources cited in this dataset
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