Which GTA map is the biggest?

Of the games measured here, San Andreas is the largest by a wide margin — about 3.4× the area of GTA 3. Later titles are not included, because their zone tables have not been read from the files and quoting a number without a method is the problem this page exists to fix.

Why do these numbers differ from the ones I have seen elsewhere?

Most circulating figures state no method at all, so there is nothing to compare against. A bounding box includes water and unreachable overshoot; a land-only trace would come out smaller. Both are defensible — but only one of them tells you which it is.

Is Vice City really about the same size as Liberty City?

By this measurement, yes — the two 3D-era cities are within a few per cent of each other, and both sit on a 4,000-unit radar square. The difference players remember is layout and density, not extent.

// Measured

How big is each GTA map, really?

Every size you can find for these maps is quoted without a method. Here is one that shows its working.

Search for the size of a Grand Theft Auto map and you get a confident number in square kilometres, repeated across a dozen sites, with no indication of what was measured. Land only, or water too? The playable area, or the whole radar square? Nobody says. The figures disagree with each other by a third and none of them can be checked.

So we measured them a different way: from the zone table each game ships in its own files, the same data the in-game radar uses to name the district you are standing in. That measurement is stated in full below, including what it counts and what it does not, so you can disagree with it precisely rather than vaguely.

Measured from the zone tables

GTA map extents measured from each game's zone table, 3 games
Game	Year	Extent (units)	Area (km²)	Radar square	Named zones	Districts
GTA 3	2001	3547 × 2926	10.38	4000	31	28
Vice City	2002	3143 × 3483	10.95	4000	35	13
San Andreas	2004	5995 × 5887	35.29	6000	378	168

Extent is the bounding box of every named zone in the game's own zone table. Area converts it on the convention that one game unit is one metre — Rockstar has never published a scale, so treat that as a convention, not a fact. The unit figures are the measurement; the square kilometres are an interpretation of it.

What the numbers actually say

The two 3D-era cities are near enough the same size. Liberty City and Vice City both sit on a 4,000-unit radar square and their measured extents land within a few per cent of each other, which is not what most people remember — Vice City feels larger because it is flatter and more open, not because it covers more ground.

San Andreas is the real jump: 3.4× the area of GTA 3, on a 6,000-unit square instead of 4,000. The zone count tells the same story from another direction — it carries far more named zones than the two cities combined, because it has to name countryside as well as streets.

Where this measurement disagrees with the figures circulating elsewhere, the reason is almost certainly the bounding box. It includes the water and the unreachable overshoot inside the rectangle; a land-only trace would come out smaller. That is a legitimate difference of definition rather than an error on either side.

Only the three games whose files have been read are listed. The later titles are absent on purpose: quoting a number for them here would be exactly the unsourced guess this page was written to avoid. Every district behind these figures is browsable on the interactive maps.

Islands and how the land is split

GTA 3

Liberty City

Portland (15) · Staunton Island (8) · Shoreside Vale (8)
Vice City

Vice City

One landmass · 35 named zones
San Andreas

State of San Andreas

One landmass · 378 named zones

Common questions

Which GTA map is the biggest?: Of the games measured here, San Andreas is the largest by a wide margin — about 3.4× the area of GTA 3. Later titles are not included, because their zone tables have not been read from the files and quoting a number without a method is the problem this page exists to fix.
How is the map size actually measured?: The bounding box of every named zone the game ships in its own zone table, converted on the convention that one game unit is one metre. Rockstar has never published a scale, so that conversion is a convention rather than a fact, and the raw unit figures are in the table above.
Why do these numbers differ from the ones I have seen elsewhere?: Most circulating figures state no method at all, so there is nothing to compare against. A bounding box includes water and unreachable overshoot; a land-only trace would come out smaller. Both are defensible — but only one of them tells you which it is.
Is Vice City really about the same size as Liberty City?: By this measurement, yes — the two 3D-era cities are within a few per cent of each other, and both sit on a 4,000-unit radar square. The difference players remember is layout and density, not extent.