Quick answer: Judged on raw explorable space, Elite Dangerous wins with a 1:1 Milky Way of roughly 400 billion star systems. No Man's Sky has more planets at 18.4 quintillion. Minecraft is the biggest walkable surface at about 3.6 billion km², roughly seven times Earth. Microsoft Flight Simulator gives you the real Earth at 510 million km². Everything else on the usual lists, GTA V and Red Dead included, is under 100 km² and is not remotely in the same contest.
Original illustration created for IGGG Guides.
Here is the problem with almost every list of this kind. They put a game with 400 billion star systems and a game with 37 square kilometres of hillside on the same numbered countdown, then order them by vibes. You end up reading that one game is "bigger" than another when it is actually about forty million times bigger, or occasionally smaller, depending on which blog copied which.
So this is organised differently. Four tiers, because there are genuinely four different kinds of big, and within each tier the ranking is by measured area or object count. Every figure has a stated source, and where the community disagrees I've given you the range instead of pretending.
First, a warning about these numbers
Almost no studio publishes a map size. Nearly every figure you have ever read, including most of the ones below, comes from players measuring heightmaps, timing a character running in a straight line, or scaling the map against a real world landmark. These methods disagree, sometimes badly.
Three specific traps. Water counts or it doesn't, which changes GTA V by 36%. Sea counts or it doesn't, which changes Assassin's Creed Valhalla from 94 to 120 km². And in-game miles are not real miles, which is why Red Dead estimates swing between 70 and 100 km². Treat every number here as an estimate with a margin.
Tier 1: galaxy scale, where area stops meaning anything
Original illustration created for IGGG Guides.
1. Elite Dangerous, the actual Milky Way at 1:1
This is the one those countdowns always forget, and it is arguably the biggest designed space in the medium. Frontier's Stellar Forge generated the real Milky Way at full scale, roughly 400 billion star systems, seeded with genuine astronomical survey data for the 160,000 systems we actually know about. Planets orbit in real time at true proportions. Sol is where Sol should be.
The statistic that lands hardest is the exploration counter. As of October 2025, after almost eleven years, players had collectively visited 261,063,785 unique systems. That is 0.0653% of the galaxy. Polygon worked out in 2015 that at the then current rate, charting all of it would take about 150,000 years.
2. No Man's Sky, 18.4 quintillion planets
The famous number is 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 planets across 255 galaxies and roughly 2.2 trillion star systems. Here is the detail nobody mentions: that figure is exactly 2⁶⁴. It is not a creative target, it is the ceiling of a 64-bit integer. The universe is that size because the maths ran out of room.
It ranks below Elite Dangerous here for one reason. More objects, but Elite models a real galaxy at true astronomical distances, so its traversable volume is far larger. Pick whichever definition you prefer, just be consistent about it.
3. Minecraft, bigger than seven Earths
This is where most lists go badly wrong, so here is the arithmetic in full. In Java Edition the world border sits at ±29,999,984 blocks on both axes, making the world 59,999,968 blocks across. One block is one metre. That is 60,000 km across, giving roughly 3.6 billion km².
Earth's entire surface is 510 million km². A single Minecraft world is about seven times larger than the whole planet, which makes it the largest walkable surface in gaming by an enormous margin. You will see "60 million km²" quoted constantly. That is somebody dividing by a thousand once instead of a million, and it has been copied across hundreds of articles. If you want the technical side of how these worlds are built and how the versioning works now, we cover it in every Minecraft version explained.
Tier 2: planet scale
4. Microsoft Flight Simulator, the real Earth
Every other entry invents its world. This one copies ours, 510 million km², built from Bing satellite imagery with photogrammetry on major cities and AI filling in building shapes elsewhere. Your street is in there.
It is only fourth because Earth, astonishingly, is the small option once procedural generation enters the room. It wins a category the others cannot touch though, which is accuracy. Nothing else lets you fly over your own house.
Tier 3: the giant non-procedural worlds
These are measured in square kilometres and still dwarf anything on a normal list.
| # | Game | Size | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall (1996) | ~161,600 km² | Guinness cites ~188,000 sq mi. Roughly the size of Great Britain, procedurally generated, on a 1996 floppy budget |
| 6 | Fuel (2009) | ~14,400 km² | About 5,560 sq mi. Held a Guinness record for largest console racing world |
| 7 | Just Cause 4 | 1,024 km² | One of very few officially confirmed figures. Smaller than Just Cause 2 (1,035) and 3 (1,036) |
Daggerfall is the one worth sitting with. A thirty year old RPG has a world roughly two thousand times the size of Skyrim's, and the reason is that it generated its towns and dungeons from rules rather than building them by hand. The cost is that most of it is interchangeable. That tradeoff has not changed in three decades, which is the entire point of this article.
Tier 4: handcrafted worlds, where the real craft lives
Original illustration created for IGGG Guides.
Every game below is smaller than Just Cause 4. Every one of them is also better remembered, which tells you most of what you need to know about map size as a quality measure.
| # | Game | Measured size | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8 | Assassin's Creed Valhalla | 120 km² England with sea, 94 km² land, plus 22 km² Norway | Community, fairly consistent |
| 9 | Elden Ring | ~79 km² | Community estimate |
| 10 | Grand Theft Auto V | 75.84 km² (48.15 land, 27.69 water) | High. KeWiS GTAForums measurement, used by every major outlet |
| 11 | Red Dead Redemption 2 | ~70 to 75 km² | Medium. Some estimates reach 87. Not double GTA V |
| 12 | Fallout 76 | ~41 km², about 16 sq mi | Derived from Bethesda's "4× Fallout 4" |
| 13 | The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim | ~37 km² | High. From cell grid and heightmap data |
| 14 | Ghost of Tsushima | ~28 to 49 km² | Low. Methods disagree sharply. The real island is 708 km² |
Two things fall out of that table. GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2 are about the same size, which surprises nearly everyone, and Red Dead only feels larger because you travel it on a horse. And the gap between the biggest and smallest entries here is roughly four times, while the gap between this tier and tier one is a factor of fifty million. If you want big worlds you can actually carry around, we've collected the strongest ones in the best open world games on Android.
The measurement nobody publishes: space per hour of content
Map size on its own is close to meaningless, so here's a rough density figure. Take the measured area, divide by a typical completionist playtime, and you get how much ground a game asks you to cross per hour of actual content. Lower is denser.
| Game | Area | Typical full playthrough | km² per hour |
|---|---|---|---|
| Skyrim | 37 km² | ~230 hrs | 0.16 densest |
| Elden Ring | 79 km² | ~130 hrs | 0.61 |
| Red Dead Redemption 2 | 75 km² | ~180 hrs | 0.42 |
| GTA V | 76 km² | ~85 hrs | 0.89 |
| Just Cause 4 | 1,024 km² | ~45 hrs | 22.8 emptiest |
Just Cause 4 gives you about 140 times more ground per hour than Skyrim. That is not a criticism, its whole design is about covering distance with a grappling hook, but it does explain why a 1,024 km² map can feel smaller than a 37 km² one. This is the same gap between scale and substance that runs through why modern games can feel strangely boring despite being bigger than ever.
What these worlds cost you in download
Worth checking before you commit, because install size does not track map size at all. Figures are approximate and grow with updates.
| Game | Install | At 25 Mbps | At 60 Mbps |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Flight Simulator | ~130 GB+ | ~12 hrs | ~5 hrs |
| Red Dead Redemption 2 | ~120 GB | ~11 hrs | ~4.5 hrs |
| GTA V | ~95 GB | ~9 hrs | ~3.5 hrs |
| Elden Ring | ~60 GB | ~5.5 hrs | ~2.2 hrs |
| No Man's Sky | ~20 GB | ~1.9 hrs | ~45 min |
| Minecraft | ~1 GB | ~6 min | ~2 min |
That last row is the whole argument in one line. The largest walkable world ever made downloads in a couple of minutes, because it is generated from a seed rather than shipped as data. Red Dead needs a hundred and twenty times more storage for a world roughly forty eight million times smaller. Handcrafted detail is what costs you gigabytes, not scale.
So which should you actually play?
| If you want | Play | Avoid |
|---|---|---|
| Genuine awe at scale | Elite Dangerous, Flight Simulator | Anything in tier 4 |
| Something to do every five minutes | Skyrim, Elden Ring | Daggerfall, Fuel |
| A world you change rather than tour | Minecraft and its many rivals | Ghost of Tsushima |
| Limited time, maximum payoff | Ghost of Tsushima, Elden Ring | No Man's Sky, Elite Dangerous |
| A weak PC or slow connection | Minecraft, No Man's Sky, Daggerfall (free) | Flight Simulator, Red Dead 2 |
On that third row, Minecraft's real advantage is not the 3.6 billion km², which no player will ever see a millionth of. It is that the world responds to you. If that is the quality you're chasing, the strongest alternatives in the sandbox space are worth a look, several of them with procedural worlds of their own.
The honest counter argument
Everything above treats measured area as the thing worth knowing, and there's a decent case that it is close to worthless.
Nobody experiences square kilometres. You experience travel time, and travel time is set by movement speed, not area. Ghost of Tsushima's horse makes 49 km² feel compact while Red Dead's deliberately slow riding makes a similar space feel enormous. Verticality does not appear in any of these figures either, which badly undersells games built in layers. And procedural numbers are a different thing entirely: 18.4 quintillion planets generated from the same handful of rules is arguably one planet rendered 18.4 quintillion times.
There's also an uncomfortable commercial reason these worlds keep growing. Map size is marketable in a way that quest writing is not, and when a game costs several hundred million to build, the marketable number tends to win. We traced where that pressure comes from in why big budget games stopped being fun.
Frequently asked questions
What is the biggest open world game ever made?
By explorable space, Elite Dangerous, with a 1:1 Milky Way of around 400 billion star systems. By number of planets, No Man's Sky at 18.4 quintillion. By walkable surface, Minecraft at ~3.6 billion km². By accurate real world area, Microsoft Flight Simulator at 510 million km².
Is Minecraft really bigger than Earth?
Yes, by roughly seven times. The Java world border is ±29,999,984 blocks, one block is one metre, so the world is 60,000 km across and about 3.6 billion km². Earth's surface is 510 million km².
How big is the GTA V map actually?
75.84 km² total: 48.15 km² land and 27.69 km² water. You will often see 127 km² quoted online. There is no credible measurement behind that figure.
Is Red Dead Redemption 2 bigger than GTA V?
Barely, and possibly not at all. Both land in the 70 to 76 km² range. Red Dead feels much larger because you travel on horseback and the terrain is open.
Why do map sizes differ so much between websites?
Because studios rarely publish them, so players measure. Different methods include or exclude water, use in-game distance units that do not match real ones, and ignore verticality. Then one wrong number gets copied for years.
Does a bigger map mean a better game?
Historically the opposite. Skyrim is 160 times smaller than Just Cause 4 and far more fondly remembered. Daggerfall's 161,600 km² are mostly procedurally repeated towns.
What is the biggest open world game on mobile?
Minecraft Pocket Edition uses the same generation system, so technically it is the largest. Among conventional open world mobile games the maps are far smaller, usually a few square kilometres.
Where to go next
- How Minecraft's world generation and versions actually work
- Sandbox games with worlds worth building in
- Open world games that fit in your pocket
- The big open world releases still coming
- Why huge budgets produce cautious games
- When a big world stops feeling exciting
- Browse more Open World, Survival and Action guides