State size comparison

compared to

California is about 2.8 times bigger than Illinois.

Illinois is approximately 143,961 sq km, while California is approximately 403,882 sq km, making California 181% larger than Illinois. Meanwhile, the population of Illinois is ~12.8 million people (24.4 million more people live in California).

Tip: This to-scale comparison of Illinois vs. California uses the Mercator projection, which distorts the size of regions near the poles.