Place comparison

Kinmen compared with Penghu: area, population and density

Kinmen covers about 1.19 times Penghu’s land and has about 29% more residents, giving Taiwan’s two offshore counties fairly close average densities.

Place A Grouped by country or region Place B Grouped by country or region

Equal-area outline comparison

Outlines are centered and scaled by official land area; position does not show geographic location.

Area

Population

Population density

Area data date

Population data date

The guide below belongs to this pair: Kinmen County and Penghu County. Change the selector above and the page follows, so the reading always matches the tool.

Direct answer

How different are Kinmen County and Penghu County?

Kinmen County covers 151.7 km²; Kinmen County's area is 1.19 times Penghu County's. Its reported population is 139,313; Kinmen County's population is 1.29 times Penghu County's. By average density, Kinmen County's population density is 1.09 times Penghu County's.

Area difference

Kinmen County's area is 1.19 times Penghu County's 151.7 km² · 128 km²

Population difference

Kinmen County's population is 1.29 times Penghu County's 139,313 · 107,901

Density difference

Kinmen County's population density is 1.09 times Penghu County's 918.6 /km² · 843.2 /km²

Full data and sources for each place: Kinmen County area & population, Penghu County area & population

Straight-line distance between geometric centres: about 156 km; time difference: none.

On a familiar scale

Kinmen County ≈ the size of Kinmen County (reference rung) 1,089 m² of land per resident
Penghu County ≈ 84% of Kinmen County (reference rung) 1,186 m² of land per resident

Reference scales come from Department of Household Registration, Ministry of the Interior: Land area, households and population density by township and district (year-end 2025) , as of 2025-12-31.

How to read it

This is the offshore-island pairing readers ask this site for most often. Kinmen is the larger and slightly denser of Taiwan’s two county-level archipelagos, but not by a wide margin either way.

Geography and shape

Kinmen sits in the Taiwan Strait just off the Fujian coast and is administered as six townships: Kinmen main island, Lieyu (Little Kinmen), and the exclave of Wuqiu roughly 100 km to the northwest, closer to Fujian than to the rest of the county. Penghu is a basalt archipelago of 90 islands further out in the strait, 19 of them inhabited. Both are Taiwan’s only county-level island groups; neither is a single landmass.

Population context

Kinmen’s 139,313 registered residents on 151.656 km² give an average density of about 919 per km²; Penghu’s 107,901 residents on 127.9636 km² give about 843 per km² — Kinmen runs roughly 9% denser. Both counts are household-registration totals and both islands host garrison and tourism populations beyond that figure, Kinmen from decades as a frontline military posting and Penghu from its summer tourist season.

Boundaries and definitions

The two area figures are not the same vintage: Kinmen’s 151.656 km² is the Ministry of the Interior’s household-registration table at year-end 2025, the same source used for Green Island, Orchid Island and Xiaoliuqiu; Penghu’s 127.9636 km² is the county government’s own island inventory, accessed 2026-09-04, chosen over the ministry’s 126.8641 km² cadastral figure because it is the current official count of all 90 islands. Kinmen’s outline also has a disclosed gap: it is drawn from a GADM 4.1 polygon (OpenStreetMap and Natural Earth both fail this site’s land-outline bar for Kinmen — see docs/island-data-sources.md) that omits Wuqiu, 1.2 km² of the 151.656 total, an exclave far from the rest of the county.

Kinmen County: Kinmen County at year-end 2025: 151.656 km² of land and 139,313 registered residents, both from the same Ministry of the Interior table used for Green Island, Orchid Island and Xiaoliuqiu, and reconciling exactly with the county's six townships (Jincheng 21.713 + Jinhu 41.696 + Jinsha 41.19 + Jinning 29.854 + Lieyu 16.003 + Wuqiu 1.2). 🔴 Both wired geometry sources fail this site's land-outline bar for Kinmen: OpenStreetMap's county relation is a maritime-jurisdiction boundary measuring about 998 km² (+558%), and Natural Earth's Kinmen feature draws the main island alone at the wrong area. The outline instead uses GADM 4.1's Kinmen county polygon, which measures about 150.24 km² against the 151.656 km² official figure (−0.93%) — within this site's accepted tolerance and explained by the one component GADM's polygon omits: Wuqiu, an exclave near the Fujian coast, 1.2 km² (0.79% of the county). GADM is licensed for non-commercial use only; Atlas is not commercialised. See docs/island-data-sources.md.

Penghu County: The full Penghu County archipelago: 90 islands in the county inventory. Population is the registered year-end total; the area figure is the current official inventory accessed September 4, 2026.

In-depth guide

How should Kinmen County and Penghu County be understood in context?

Kinmen and Penghu are Taiwan’s only two county-level island groups, and this is the pairing readers ask this site for most often. Kinmen is the larger and slightly denser of the two, but the margin either way is modest — this is not a lopsided comparison like most of the island pages on this site.

Two archipelagos, two different shapes of "county"

Penghu’s 90 islands cluster together in the middle of the Taiwan Strait; the furthest, Mianhua Islet, is still within Penghu’s own waters. Kinmen’s six townships are not one cluster: the main island and Lieyu sit together close to the Fujian coast, while Wuqiu Township is an exclave roughly 100 km to the northwest, closer to mainland China than to the rest of the county. A map that shows only "Kinmen" as a blob around the main island — which is what most outline sources do — quietly drops a whole township.

This is exactly the gap disclosed on the Kinmen page: the GADM 4.1 polygon used for the outline omits Wuqiu, 1.2 km² of the county’s 151.656 km². The area and population figures include it; the drawn shape does not. Penghu carries a smaller, better-known version of the same issue — 71 of its 90 islands are uninhabited and together make up only 2.4% of the county’s land.

Why the outline took this long

Kinmen’s figures have been usable since this site’s B9 batch; only the outline was missing. Three sources were tried and rejected before GADM: OpenStreetMap’s county relation, which traces a maritime jurisdiction boundary at +558% of the true land area; Natural Earth’s Kinmen feature, which draws the main island alone at the wrong area; and even Taiwan’s own National Land Surveying and Mapping Center shapefiles, which measure +21.8% because Taiwan’s administrative boundary runs to the low-water line while the land-area statistic does not. GADM 4.1’s polygon measures within 1% once Wuqiu is accounted for.

That government-shapefile result is worth sitting with: "just use the official map" does not automatically fix a scope mismatch. The two Kinmen numbers being compared — a cadastral-style land-area statistic and an administrative boundary that runs to the tideline — measure two different things at the coastline, and no single source labelled "the county boundary" resolves that by itself.

Questions people ask

About this geographic comparison

Which is bigger, Kinmen County or Penghu County?

Kinmen County is bigger, with a land area about 1.19× that of Penghu County (151.7 vs 128 km²).

How do Kinmen County and Penghu County differ in area, population and density?

Kinmen County is 1.19× the size of Penghu County — 151.7 km² vs 128 km². Population is 1.29× higher; average density is 1.09× higher. Each side’s scope and reference date are set out under “Boundaries and definitions” on this page.

Is Kinmen bigger than Penghu?

Yes, by land area: 151.656 km² against 127.9636 km², about 1.19 times. Many people guess it the other way around, because Penghu’s 90 islands sound larger in number.

Which has the higher population density?

Kinmen, by a modest margin: about 919 residents per km² against Penghu’s 843, roughly 9% higher. Neither figure counts the garrison or seasonal-tourist populations both islands carry beyond their registered residents.

Does Kinmen’s outline include every island in the county?

Not quite. The drawn outline omits Wuqiu, an exclave about 100 km northwest of the main Kinmen group and close to the Fujian coast — 1.2 km² of the county’s 151.656 km² total, which is still counted in the area and population figures shown.

Sources

Outline data:

GADM 4.1 · Free for academic and other non-commercial use; redistribution or commercial use requires permission