Terms of Service

1. Definitions

• Operator — the entity that runs and maintains the Service.
• Service — the website together with all of its subpages, tools, and content.
• User — any person using the Service.

2. Nature and scope of the service

RealSize.World is a free, educational project dedicated to visualizing the true size of countries and continents and the distortions produced by map projections.

Using the Service requires no registration or account. The Service does not sell goods or services and does not collect data submitted through forms.

Users may voluntarily support the project (e.g. by buying a virtual coffee) through third-party micro-tipping platforms such as BuyCoffee.to or Ko-fi. Such payments are voluntary gifts or donations and do not constitute fees for accessing the Service or consideration for commercial goods or services.

3. Acceptable use

Users agree to use the Service lawfully and in good faith. In particular, the following are prohibited:

• any activity that may disrupt the Service (e.g. attacks, automated bulk scraping, attempts to bypass security),
• using the Service for unlawful purposes,
• infringing the intellectual property rights of the Operator or third parties.

4. Intellectual property

We cite a single fact about Monaco's territorial area from IMSEE / Direction de la Prospective, de l’Urbanisme et de la Mobilité, Monaco en chiffres 2023, p. 16 (https://imsee.mc/publications/archives-du-monaco-en-chiffres). The hectare-to-km² conversion is ours. Source terms: https://imsee.mc/mentions-legales. We do not copy the publication's tables, text or maps, or claim that it has an open licence.

The source code, layout, texts, and other elements of the Service are legally protected and are owned by the Operator or used under appropriate licenses.

Geographic data and border geometries come from publicly available sources (including Natural Earth / world-atlas). Our own content, meaning texts, graphics and code, may be used for personal use; further distribution requires attribution.

We describe historical facts in our own words and cite their sources. Context for the empires section includes the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and the official histories of Toruń and Bydgoszcz. We do not reuse their texts, photographs or maps.

Third-party materials are provided under their own licences. We use the continental reconstruction data of Cao et al. (2024), historical empire borders from the Cliopatria database (Seshat Global History Databank) and World Bank data (World Development Indicators), including FAO area data, under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Natural Earth data and the flag images from Flagpedia.net are in the public domain, and the Davies et al. (2020) grids are available under CC0 1.0. US state areas are cited from the U.S. Census Bureau, and the areas of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland from the Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0; contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2025). We treat values from the PREM scientific model of the Earth's interior (Dziewonski and Anderson, 1981) as facts and cite their source; the calculations based on them are our own. River lengths, basin areas and discharges are likewise treated as facts with their sources cited (including Encyclopædia Britannica, the USGS, the US National Park Service and Dai and Trenberth 2002), without copying their texts or tables. Time zone coordinates come from the IANA time zone database (public domain). The data methodology page (https://realsize.world/en/data-methodology) lists the sources and the changes we made. These terms do not limit the rights those licences grant.

5. Nature of the data and disclaimer

The data presented in the Service (areas, populations, statistics) is illustrative and educational. Despite due care, the Operator does not guarantee its complete accuracy or timeliness.

The Service is provided “as is”. It should not be used as a data source for navigation, official, scientific, or other purposes that require reference-grade data.

To the extent permitted by applicable law, the Operator is not liable for any damages arising from the use of, or inability to use, the Service.

6. Availability and external links

The Operator strives to keep the Service continuously available but does not guarantee uninterrupted operation and reserves the right to perform maintenance and change functionality.

The Service may contain links to external websites. The Operator is not responsible for their content or privacy practices.

Selected pages in the English version of the Service may contain labelled advertisements with affiliate links to external sellers. The Operator may earn a commission from purchases made through these links. A commission disclosure appears with each advertisement.

You purchase directly from the seller, whose prices, availability, delivery, payment, return and complaint terms apply. RealSize.World does not accept orders or payments for these products. An advertisement for a decorative map does not certify its cartographic accuracy or its use of the projection shown in our interactive tool.

Voluntary contributions are handled by external payment and tipping platforms (such as BuyCoffee.to, Ko-fi, Stripe, PayPal). All transactions take place entirely on those external platforms under their respective terms and conditions.

7. Changes to these Terms

The Operator may amend these Terms for valid reasons (e.g. legal or functional changes). The current version is always published on this page together with its update date.

8. Governing law and contact

Matters not covered here are governed by Polish law, without prejudice to mandatory consumer-protection provisions.

For questions about these Terms, contact: contact [at] realsize.world.