Olympus Mons is taller and vastly broader than Mount Everest, but the height comparison depends on which published measurement you use. NASA/JPL gives Olympus Mons a height of 27 km (17 miles) in a 2024 article, compared with Everest’s roughly 8.85 km (about 5.5 miles) above sea level. Other NASA pages report different Olympus Mons heights, so those figures should be kept tied to their sources rather than treated as one settled base-to-summit measurement.
How much taller is Olympus Mons than Mount Everest?
Using the recent NASA/JPL comparison, Olympus Mons rises 27 km (17 miles), while Mount Everest reaches 8,848 m (29,029 feet) above Earth’s surface. On those stated figures, Olympus Mons is about three times as tall. This is a comparison of the published heights, not a newly harmonized measurement: the sources do not establish a common reference datum and base boundary for Olympus Mons.
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| Landform and source | Reported height | Measurement context |
|---|---|---|
| Olympus Mons — NASA/JPL, June 27, 2024 (NASA/JPL article) | 27 km (17 mi) | Height stated for the shield volcano |
| Olympus Mons — NASA Science Photojournal, image added August 11, 2023 (Photojournal page) | 21.9 km (13.6 mi; 72,000 ft) | Height stated for Olympus Mons |
| Olympus Mons — NASA educational resource, page date not stated (NASA PDF) | 25 km (16 mi) | Height stated in an educational comparison |
| Olympus Mons — NASA Science, page date not stated (Mars: Facts) | More than 40 km (25 mi; 132,000 ft) | Explicitly described as base to summit |
| Mount Everest — NASA Science (Mars: Facts) | 8,848 m (29,029 ft) | Elevation above Earth’s surface |
| Mount Everest — NASA Science Photojournal (Photojournal page) | 29,032 ft | Everest comparison figure on that page |
The figures differ because the pages do not provide a shared measurement definition that lets readers reconcile the Olympus Mons heights into one exact number. NASA’s Photojournal page also gives 7,757 m (25,449 ft) for the elevation change across a photographed escarpment; that is not the volcano’s total height.
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How large is Olympus Mons across?
Olympus Mons is a shield volcano, and NASA/JPL reports that its base spans 600 km (373 miles). NASA Science offers another sense of scale: the volcano’s base covers an area comparable to the U.S. state of Arizona. The available figures describe Olympus Mons’s footprint; the cited sources do not provide a comparable base-width measurement for Everest, so a width ratio would be misleading.
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Why are the two mountains so different?
Olympus Mons grew through Martian volcanism
Olympus Mons is a volcano built by eruptions on Mars. NASA explains that Mars had highly active volcanoes early in its history. Unlike Earth, Mars lacks tectonic plates that move across hotspots; that helped a volcano continue building in one place. NASA also points to Mars’s lower gravity as a factor that could let magma rise to great heights. These conditions help explain the scale of Martian volcanoes, rather than establishing a precise height for Olympus Mons.
NASA’s Mars in a Minute explainer describes Olympus Mons as more than twice as tall as Everest in its comparison, while the agency’s published height figures vary by page.
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Everest was built by tectonic collision
Everest’s geological story is tied to the Indian subcontinent colliding with Asia. NASA dates the start of that story to around 40 million years ago and notes that limestone at the summit is marine rock: it formed in an ancient marine environment, not as volcanic material. Everest is Earth’s highest peak, but it is a mountain formed through a very different geological process from Olympus Mons.
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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsNASA’s account of the world’s tallest mountain describes Everest’s collision-related history and summit rock.
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What the comparison does—and does not—tell you
- For a straightforward height comparison: use NASA/JPL’s 2024 figures, 27 km for Olympus Mons and 8,848 m for Everest, while identifying them as the values those sources state.
- For Olympus Mons’s footprint: the reported 600 km base diameter and Arizona-sized-area comparison convey its breadth without suggesting a matching Everest width.
- For geological context: compare a Martian shield volcano with a peak shaped by the collision of tectonic landmasses on Earth; they are not the same kind of landform.
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