About WhatsThePop

When you're planning a trip, questions like "is this country's population bigger or smaller than mine?" or "how warm does it actually get there this month?" come up constantly. Search results tend to scatter that information across dozens of pages, and almost none of them answer the question you actually have: how does this compare to what I already know? WhatsThePop started as a personal project to fix exactly that — pick any country, and see it laid out next to your own.

What's on the site

Every country page covers population, land area, nominal and per-capita GDP, religious composition, official languages and English proficiency, leading industries, average monthly temperature and rainfall, time zone, electrical outlet standard, and which side of the road people drive on — the mix of facts you'd actually want before visiting or just trying to understand a place.

Where the data comes from

MetricSourceUpdate cadence
Population, nominal & per-capita GDP, urbanizationWorld Bank Open DataReviewed quarterly
Land area, currency, calling code, base country infoworld-countries (mledoze/countries) open datasetAs upstream changes
Capital city coordinatesWikidataAs upstream changes
Monthly average temperature & rainfallOpen-Meteo climate archiveAs needed
Religious composition, leading industriesCIA World Factbook and other public references, curated by handReviewed quarterly
Happiness index, livability rankPublished public rankings, curated by handReviewed as new editions are released
Country borders / map shapesNatural EarthAs needed

Update policy

Data is reviewed on a quarterly cycle. Every country page shows the year each figure was collected, so you can tell how current a number is at a glance.

Limitations, honestly

Not every metric exists for every country at the same quality. Some figures may be missing where no reliable public source was found. GDP and other USD-denominated values are a snapshot from a point in time, not a live exchange rate. Religious composition percentages vary noticeably between survey organizations, so treat them as a reference point rather than an exact figure.

Who's behind this

WhatsThePop is built and maintained by a single developer as an independent side project, not a company. If you spot an error or have an idea for what would make this more useful, the contact page is the fastest way to reach me.