How are the numbers computed?
Length within a population is treated as approximately normal. The distribution comes
from the largest clinical review available, Veale et al. 2015 [1]: clinically measured
erect length averages 13.12 cm with a standard deviation
of 1.66 cm, which we round to 1.7. Your position is z = (you − country mean) / SD, converted to a
percentile with the normal CDF using the Abramowitz–Stegun approximation. We then
multiply by the adult male population and report men, not percentiles, rounded to the
nearest 10,000 because the inputs do not support more precision.
Note the gap: the clinical mean is 13.12 cm, while the
placeholder world mean in our table sits at 13.6 cm,
because compiled country figures lean on self-reports. Independent work comparing
measured with self-reported studies puts the measured combined mean at
13.61 cm and shows self-reports running well above it
[2][3]. That gap
is the whole story of this dataset.
What does a stretched measurement tell you?
Almost nothing in the literature measures what you just typed in. A review of the
methods used by 70 studies found that 60 % measured the penis stretched while
flaccid, and only 27 % ever measured it erect [17]. The register inherits that
problem. Of the countries below whose best study yielded a usable figure at all, twelve
were measured stretched and seven erect, and two of those seven were the men measuring
themselves.
So the whole table depends on whether a stretched measurement can be converted into an
erect one. Four credible sources answer that question four different ways.
| Source | What it is | Stretched against erect |
| Veale 2015 [1] | 15,521 men, pooled across studies | stretched reads 0.12 cm higher |
| Wessells 1996 [5] | 80 men, both states measured in the same man | stretched reads 0.5 cm lower |
| Belladelli 2023 [15] | 55,761 men, pooled across studies | stretched reads 1.0 cm lower |
| Habous 2015 [16] | 201 men, both states, seven examiners | stretched reads 21.4 % lower, a 2.64 cm gap |
The distance between the top row and the bottom row is about
2.8 cm. The entire claimed range in the register below, from
the lowest country to the highest, is 7.9 cm. The
uncertainty in the single conversion everything depends on is therefore more than a
third of the whole effect the famous maps claim to show.
The reasons for the disagreement are mechanical rather than statistical. In the study
with seven examiners, different clinicians measuring the same men underestimated erect
length by anywhere from 16 to 27 % [16]. And pulling a flaccid penis out to its
true erect length takes at least 450 g of tension, while measured examiner force
averaged 428 g [15]. The measurement usually stops just short, by an amount that
depends on who is holding the ruler.
So we do not convert. Where a country's best study measured stretched,
this register says stretched and leaves it there. Publishing a tidy erect figure would
mean quietly picking one of those four rows and hoping nobody asks about the other
three.
What do we assume?
- The same SD everywhere. Nobody has set out to measure national
standard deviations, so we apply the global one to every country. We did at least
check whether that is reasonable: see the next section.
- Normality. A good approximation near the middle, weaker at the
extremes. Percentiles beyond roughly the 99th should be read as illustrations.
- Length only. Rankings ignore girth entirely, since no country-level
girth data exists that is worth publishing.
Is one standard deviation for the whole world defensible?
Reasonably, as long as a clinician did the measuring. These are the spreads actually
reported by the national studies we could locate:
| Country | Study | Measure | SD (cm) |
| Egypt | Shalaby 2015, n=2,000 | stretched | 1.35 |
| Turkey | Aslan 2011, n=1,132 | stretched | 1.60 |
| China | Meta-analysis 2025, n=34,060 | erect | 1.63 |
| World | Veale 2015, n=15,521 [1] | erect | 1.66 |
| Iraq | Hussein 2017, n=223 | stretched | 1.90 |
| Egypt | Kamel 2009, n=949 | stretched | 1.90 |
| Italy | Di Mauro 2021, n=4,685, self-measured | erect | 2.55 |
Clinician-measured spreads sit between 1.35 cm and
1.9 cm, and the 1.7 we use sits in the middle of them. The
outlier is the one dataset in the list where the men measured themselves, and its
spread is roughly half again as wide as any clinical one. Self-measurement does not
only push the average up. It makes the whole distribution baggier, which is a further
reason to distrust any national figure derived from it.
How are sources graded?
Every country figure gets a grade from A to D:
- A: measured by clinicians, published, and we can read the study.
- B: clinically measured but small, old, or methodologically odd.
- C: self-reported survey with a described method.
- D: self-reported with no method, or a study nobody can actually
locate. A surprising share of the internet's favourite numbers are D.
How the audit works: every country was checked against the included-study lists of the
three systematic reviews of the world measurement literature (Veale 2015 [1], the
Belladelli 2023 meta-analysis of 75 studies [15], and the Kaya 2025 review of 33
studies sorted by WHO region [14]), plus targeted searches for the countries with
studies. The whole list was then swept a second time, independently, against the Europe
PMC database by country. A country appearing in no review, with nothing found on top of
that, is marked "none located". If you know a study we missed, the
about page tells you where to send it, and we will grade it.
One category sits between "matched" and "none located". Spain, Norway and Poland each
appear in the measurement literature exactly once, inside a single drug trial that
pooled 423 prostate-cancer patients across eight countries and published no per-country
figure. Their men have been measured; their countries have no number. Calling that
"no study" would be unfair, and calling it a source would be false, so the register
says what it is. The trial measured stretched length only, so even a per-country
breakdown would not have answered the question the map claims to answer.
Where do the claimed figures come from?
We traced our own placeholder set, and it matches the widely republished
worlddata.info compilation digit for digit: Ecuador 17.61, Cameroon 16.67, Bolivia
16.51, Italy 15.35, and a world mean of 13.59, which is the 13.6 used across this
site. That compilation feeds most viral penis-size maps, statistics accounts and
listicles, and it publishes no verifiable per-country references. Where we have
checked it against locatable studies, the median claim sits half a centimetre above
the paper, and the average hides the pattern. Four of the nineteen claims are simply
the study's own figure, rounded: Britain, India, Germany and the United States. Where
the claim carries a D, meaning nothing solid stands behind it, the median runs a full
centimetre high. And for the other hundred countries there is nothing to check it
against at all.
We show these numbers deliberately: they are what the internet believes, and the
register's job is to grade every claim against a real study until each one is
confirmed, corrected, or exposed. When the grading is complete, the calculator and the
rankings switch to study-based figures, and countries without a usable study go grey.
If a country has no study, what is the honest fallback?
Three systematic reviews have pooled the world literature. They agree on the shape and
disagree on the detail.
| Review | Studies | Men | Flaccid | Stretched | Erect |
| Veale 2015 [1] | 17 | 15,521 | 9.16 | 13.24 | 13.12 |
| Belladelli 2023 [15] | 75 | 55,761 | 8.70 | 12.93 | 13.93 |
| Kaya 2025 [14] | 33 | 36,883 | 9.22 | 12.84 | 13.84 |
Only one of the three breaks the world down far enough to be useful as a substitute for
a missing country. These are Belladelli's pooled regional means, in centimetres:
| Region | Flaccid | Stretched | Erect | 95 % CI on erect |
| Africa | 8.09 | 12.53 | 14.88 | 12.50–17.26 |
| Asia | 7.23 | 11.60 | 11.74 | 10.18–13.29 |
| Europe | 9.44 | 13.40 | 14.12 | 12.53–15.72 |
| North America | 9.82 | 13.75 | 14.58 | 13.68–15.48 |
| South America | 11.00 | 15.60 | 14.50 | 11.40–17.60 |
| Oceania | not reported | not reported | 15.71 | 12.73–18.69 |
Look at the last column before drawing any conclusion. The African erect mean is a
single study's worth of evidence stretched across a continent, and its interval runs
from 12.5 cm to 17.26 cm.
Oceania's is one Australian study of 184 men who measured themselves. Heterogeneity
across the pooled studies was 98.9 % [15], which is about as high as that number
goes. Note also that South America's stretched mean exceeds its erect mean, which
cannot be true of the same men and simply reflects two different sets of studies.
This is the honest fallback, and we do not paste it into the country table. A regional
average wearing a national label is precisely the move that produced the numbers we are
auditing. It belongs here, with its error bars showing, and nowhere else.
A note on the newest of the three reviews. Kaya 2025 is the only one to sort the world
by WHO region, so it is the one we would most like to lean on. Its abstract reports the
largest regional flaccid mean as 10.98 cm; its own results
section says 9.86 cm. Its abstract gives the largest flaccid
circumference as 10.00 cm against
9.74 cm in the results. It lists its regions "in decreasing
order" with 10.88 placed ahead of 11.57. And it includes a self-measured study after
stating that self-reports were excluded [14]. We cite it because it is the best regional
breakdown that exists, and we say all of that because someone should.
What is wrong with this data?
- Self-reporting. Men round up. Self-reported means run
1–2 cm above clinically measured ones,
and many country figures are self-reported.
- Bone-pressed or not. Pressing the ruler through the fat pad to the
pubic bone adds 1.8–2.0 cm. Two
studies measured the same men both ways and found
1.81 cm in 778 Saudi men [18] and
2.0 cm in an Egyptian control group [19]. Studies differ in
which of the two they report, and that difference alone is larger than most of the
gaps between countries in the table below. See
how to measure penis size.
- Tiny samples. Some national figures rest on fewer than 100 men.
- Different people measuring. Seven andrology specialists measuring
201 of the same men underestimated erect length by between 16 and 27 %
depending on which of them held the ruler [16]. Two studies of the same country can
disagree for no reason other than that.
- Ghost studies. Several widely cited national means trace back to
studies that cannot be found at all. The famous world maps largely descend from a
2013 compilation whose figures came from unpublished website collections mixing
self-report with measurement [13]. Until re-sourced, everything descending from that
lineage is grade D by default.
- And it is not only our problem. In 2016 a Congolese team surveyed 21
sources of public information about penis size in Kinshasa and Lubumbashi.
85.7 % announced a figure without stating any measurement method, and
57.1 % cited no reference at all [20]. DR Congo carries one of the highest
claimed figures on every viral map and has no measurement study whatsoever. The
correction was published inside the country a decade ago, and nobody redrew the map.
All 119 claims, reviewed. The verdict: 7 match a locatable
study, 21 are contradicted by the best study in their country,
3 appear only inside a pooled multinational sample with no national figure,
and 88 have no locatable study at all. That last number is the map nobody
publishes.
The corrections
What the audit turned up in every country we chased individually, including the ones
where the chase came back empty. Study links where a stable one is available. The
87 countries not listed here were swept with the reviews and the database
search and produced nothing to chase, Ecuador and its famous 17.6 included.
- Argentina B
: The claimed 14.9 sits just under the 15.2 cm stretched mean Solé 2022 measured in 800 men across four hospitals, the largest study in South America. As so often, a stretched figure wearing an erect label. The same study found little or no correlation between penis size and height, weight or foot length.
Study
- Australia D
: The only Australian study is self-measured: 15.71 cm in 184 condom-study volunteers, which mainly demonstrates the self-report problem. The claimed 13.3 matches nothing at all.
Study
- Belgium D
: Seventeen men in 1992 is the entire Belgian evidence base. The claimed 15.8 is unsupported.
- Brazil D
: Brazil has real studies: 900 volunteers measured stretched in 2018 (a study explicitly framed as testing a myth), 689 elderly urology patients, and a small 1994 erect series of 150 men. None of them supports the claimed 15.7.
Study
- Bulgaria D
: Tomova 2010 measured flaccid length only. Nothing supports the claimed 15.0 erect.
- Canada D
: The only Canadian data is a 1993 height-and-foot-size correlation paper that measured stretched length in 63 volunteers. The claimed 14.9 rests on nothing.
- China B
: China is the best-evidenced country in the register. A 2025 meta-analysis pooled 23 studies and 34,060 men to 12.42 cm erect (SD 1.63), and the largest single study, Chen 2014, found 12.9 cm stretched in 5,196 men and 12.9 cm erect in a 311-man subgroup. The claimed 12.9 lands about half a centimetre high, and no other country in this table has this much evidence behind the comparison.
Study
- Egypt D
: Three Egyptian studies now exist, all clinician-measured, none supporting the claim. Kamel 2009 measured 949 men at 12.9 cm stretched, Shalaby 2015 measured 2,000 at 13.84 cm stretched, and Salama's 2016 controls were measured erect at 13.0 cm, or 15.0 cm with the ruler pressed to the bone. The compilation's 15.7 is close to only that last figure, from the smallest sample of the three.
Study
- France D
: No French study has ever measured erect length. Bondil 1992 measured flaccid and stretched in 905 urology patients. Where the compilation's 15.7 comes from is anyone's guess.
- Germany B
: Matches Schneider 2001, one of very few studies to measure erect length properly (14.48 cm in young men). Small sample of 143, hence B.
Study
- Greece D
: The only Greek study measured 52 urology patients, stretched. The claimed 14.7 cannot be traced to it.
- India B
: Matches Promodu 2007 almost exactly: 13.01 cm measured erect. The erect subgroup was only 93 men, hence B.
Study
- Iran D
: Mehraban 2007 measured a random sample of 1,500 men: 11.58 cm stretched. The claimed 13.4 floats 1.8 above it.
Study
- Iraq D
: Hussein 2017 measured 223 healthy men in Baghdad and published a proper nomogram, with a stretched mean of 12.6 cm and a median of 12.5. The claimed 13.6 floats a centimetre above it.
Study
- Israel D
: Chen 2000 measured 55 patients with induced erections: 13.6 cm. The claimed 14.4 overshoots the only real measurement.
Study
- Italy D
: The internet says 15.4. The largest clinician study measured 3,300 young men at 12.5 cm stretched and never measured erect at all. The largest Italian dataset of any kind, Di Mauro 2021, asked 4,685 men to measure themselves at home and got 16.78 cm erect. The claim sits between a clinical measurement and a self-measurement, matching neither, which is how these figures are made.
Study
- Japan D
: Kadono 2017 measured about a hundred clinic patients: roughly 12.6 cm stretched. The claimed 13.5 erect matches no Japanese measurement.
- Jordan D
: Awwad 2005 measured 271 healthy men: 13.5 cm stretched. Erect length was only measured in patients with erectile dysfunction, so the compilation's 14.2 erect has no source.
Study
- Mexico D
: The only entry in the literature index is a condom manufacturer's promotional survey from 2001. That is the entire evidence base behind the claimed 15.1.
- Nigeria D
: Orakwe 2007 found 13.37 cm stretched in 115 men and never measured erect. A second study, Takure 2021, measured 271 men and reported 10.6 cm stretched under 50 and 14.1 cm over 50, an age pattern running the wrong way and hard to credit. The compilation's 15.0 sits above every Nigerian measurement on record.
- Norway D
: Norwegian men have been measured, but only inside the same 423-man, eight-country trial baseline, with no national figure published. The claimed 14.3 has nothing to be checked against.
Study
- Poland D
: Poland's only appearance in the literature is inside that same pooled trial baseline. Saying no Polish study exists would be slightly unfair; saying a Polish figure exists would be simply false.
Study
- Saudi Arabia D
: Habous 2015 induced erections pharmacologically in 778 men and measured 14.34 cm bone-pressed, 12.53 without pressing. The compilation's 13.5 matches neither.
Study
- South Korea D
: Son 2003 measured 123 conscripts: 9.6 cm stretched. The compilation's 10.8 erect is not from any locatable study. Belladelli's index also lists a 309-man Korean series measured erect (Park 2011) that we have not yet been able to read; it would be the better source once obtained.
- Spain D
: Spain appears in the world measurement literature exactly once: as part of the baseline of a drug trial in prostate-cancer patients that pooled 423 men across eight countries and published no per-country figure. There is no Spanish estimate for the claimed 13.9 to agree or disagree with.
Study
- Sweden D
: No Swedish measurement study could be located at all. The 14.4 is pure compilation.
- Taiwan D
: A single 40-man study from 1992 is all that exists. The claimed 10.8 rests on it at best.
- Tanzania D
: Chrouser 2013 measured adults at about 11.5 cm unstretched to size circumcision devices, with no stretched or erect data. The claimed 15.0 is unsupported.
- Turkey B
: The 14.1 sits right at Söylemez 2012's stretched mean from 2,276 men (a second study of 1,132 men found 13.7), relabelled as erect somewhere along the way. The closest thing to an honest number in the compilation.
Study
- United Kingdom B
: Khan 2012 measured 609 British men: 14.3 cm stretched, exactly the claimed figure, relabelled as erect somewhere along the way. Same pattern as Turkey.
Study
- United States C
: The compilation figure matches Herbenick 2014, a real study of 1,661 men who self-measured erect to receive a fitted condom. A decent incentive to be honest, but still self-reported, hence C.
Study
- Vietnam D
: The rare case where the internet understates. 14,597 men measured at clinics gave a median of 14.67 cm stretched, against the compilation's 11.5.
Study
Want the raw files? The dataset page explains what will be
published, and why the placeholder set is not downloadable yet.
References
Every health claim on this site traces to one of the sources below. This is the whole
site's bibliography, not just this page's, so the numbered markers above skip the
entries that are cited on the condom, measurement and testicular pages instead. The
country table above is the part still being sourced, and is labelled accordingly.
- Veale D, Miles S, Bramley S, Muir G, Hodsoll J. Am I normal? A systematic review and construction of nomograms for flaccid and erect penis length and circumference in up to 15,521 men. BJU International 2015; 115(6): 978–986. PubMed 25487360. Clinically measured erect length 13.12 cm (SD 1.66); erect circumference 11.66 cm (SD 1.10).
- King BM. Average-size erect penis: fiction, fact, and the need for counseling. Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy 2021; 47(1): 80–89. PubMed 32666897. Combined mean of measured studies 13.61 cm; self-reported figures run substantially higher.
- King BM, Duncan LM, Clinkenbeard KM, Rutland MB, Ryan KM. Social desirability and young men's self-reports of penis size. Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy 2019; 45(5): 452–455. PubMed 30681032.
- Lever J, Frederick DA, Peplau LA. Does size matter? Men's and women's views on penis size across the lifespan. Psychology of Men and Masculinity 2006; 7(3): 129–143. Full text. Of 52,031 respondents, 85 % of women were satisfied with their partner's size, while 55 % of men were satisfied with their own.
- Wessells H, Lue TF, McAninch JW. Penile length in the flaccid and erect states: guidelines for penile augmentation. Journal of Urology 1996; 156(3): 995–997. The bone-pressed measurement technique, and augmentation guidance reserved for far below the normal range.
- ISO 4074. Natural rubber latex male condoms: requirements and test methods. Defines nominal width as half the flat circumference.
- Crosby RA, Yarber WL, Graham CA, Sanders SA. Does it fit okay? Problems with condom use as a function of self-reported poor fit. Sexually Transmitted Infections 2010; 86(1): 36–38. PubMed 20157178. Ill-fitting condoms carried 2.6 times the odds of breakage and 2.7 times the odds of slippage.
- Penis enlargement products: do they work? Mayo Clinic. mayoclinic.org.
- Micropenis. StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf. NBK562275. Stretched length more than 2.5 SD below the age-adjusted mean; adult threshold about 9.3 cm. See also Hatipoğlu N, Kurtoğlu S, Journal of Clinical Research in Pediatric Endocrinology 2013, PMC3890219.
- Key statistics and survival rates for testicular cancer. American Cancer Society. cancer.org. Most common solid tumour in men aged 15–34; five-year survival about 95 % overall and 99 % when localized.
- Testis fact sheet, Cancer Today (Globocan 2024 estimates). International Agency for Research on Cancer, WHO. gco.iarc.who.int. An estimated 70,714 new cases and 9,240 deaths worldwide per year; Europe carries 35 % of cases but 18 % of deaths.
- US Preventive Services Task Force. Screening for testicular cancer: reaffirmation recommendation statement. Annals of Internal Medicine 2011; 154(7): 483–486. uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org. Grade D against population screening, self-examination included: cited on the check yourself page as the honest caveat, alongside the NHS and ACS guidance on knowing your own baseline.
- Lynn R. Rushton's r-K life history theory of race differences in penis length and circumference examined in 113 populations. Personality and Individual Differences 2013; 55(3): 261–266. Cited as provenance, not as evidence: this paper is the main ancestor of the viral country maps, its figures trace to unpublished website compilations, and its author's broader body of work is widely criticized as methodologically flawed. The register treats every figure descending from it as grade D pending re-sourcing.
- Kaya E, et al. A systematic review and meta-analysis of penis length and circumference according to WHO regions: who has the biggest one? Urology Research and Practice 2025. PubMed 40248849. 33 studies, 36,883 men, clinician-measured only. Source of the WHO-region breakdown, and of the internal contradictions noted above.
- Belladelli F, Del Giudice F, Glover F, et al. Worldwide temporal trends in penile length: a systematic review and meta-analysis. World Journal of Men's Health 2023; 41(4). PubMed 36792094. 75 studies, 55,761 men, 1942–2021. Pooled flaccid 8.70 cm, stretched 12.93 cm, erect 13.93 cm. Erect length rose 24 % across 29 years. I² = 98.9 %. Its Table 1 is the backbone of this register's audit, and the source of the 450 g stretching force figure.
- Habous M, Muir G, Soliman T, et al. Analysis of the interobserver variability in penile length assessment. Journal of Sexual Medicine 2015; 12(10). PubMed 26440678. 201 men, seven examiners: stretched measurement underestimated erect length by 2.64 cm (21.4 %), with interobserver variation from 16 to 27 %.
- Cakir OO, Pozzi E, Castiglione F, et al. Penile length measurement: methodological challenges and recommendations, a systematic review. Journal of Sexual Medicine 2021; 18: 433–439. PubMed 33648901. Of 70 studies, 60 % measured stretched length and only 27 % measured erect.
- Habous M, Tealab A, Williamson B, et al. Erect penile dimensions in a cohort of 778 Middle Eastern men: establishment of a nomogram. Journal of Sexual Medicine 2015; 12(6). PubMed 25904106. Erect length 14.34 cm measured to the pubic bone against 12.53 cm measured from the skin, in the same men.
- Salama N. Consultation for small-sized penis in the Egyptian males: a case control study. American Journal of Men's Health 2016. PubMed 25563384. Controls measured 13.0 cm erect from the skin and 15.0 cm to the bone. Of 239 men who presented convinced they were too small, not one measured below 7 cm erect.
- Mulenga PC, Kazadi AB. Informations inexactes sur la taille du pénis en République Démocratique du Congo: à propos de 21 sources d'information. Pan African Medical Journal 2016. PubMed 28154646. Of 21 sources broadcasting a penis size in Kinshasa and Lubumbashi, 85.7 % gave no measurement method and 57.1 % gave no reference.