How big is the EVE Online universe?

New Eden, the cluster EVE Online is set in, holds 5,485 solar systems linked by 13,978 stargate connections, and every one of those stars sits inside a volume roughly 101 light years across. EO-Map draws that cluster at its real physical scale in your browser, so you can look at the whole thing at once instead of reading the number and taking it on trust. The comparison is one toggle inside the View flyout, which opens from the left rail once the map is up.

New Eden by the numbers

How wide is New Eden, really

The bounding box around New Eden spans about 101 light years on its longest axis and about 89 on the next, but only about 23 through the galactic up axis. That box excludes wormhole space, which sits far outside it. New Eden is a slab, not a ball. That is why the map looks flat from above and thin from the side: nearly all of New Eden sits close to one plane.

Every system fits inside a sphere of about 58 light years radius drawn around the middle of that box. Our own galaxy is on the order of a hundred thousand light years across, so the entire setting of EVE Online is a pocket of it about a thousandth of that width. The cluster feels enormous because crossing it by stargate takes so long, not because the stars are far apart.

Compare Universe Scale

Numbers like that are hard to feel. Compare Universe Scale is a toggle in the View flyout that answers the question visually: it draws another well-known game universe around New Eden, using that universe's real stellar coordinates, with both at one shared physical scale.

Turn it on and the camera pulls outward over about two seconds. New Eden shrinks into a dense central speck while tens of thousands of foreign stars fill the view around it. A short readout names both spans and the ratio: New Eden at about 101 light years, the imported universe at about 14,480, and roughly 143 times the linear scale. A small label marks which speck is New Eden, because after one orbit nothing else would.

That ratio is linear, the width of one against the width of the other. It is not a volume ratio, and treating it as one would overstate the difference by a factor in the millions.

How the comparison is measured

The claim is only worth making if it is honest, so the implementation is narrow.

• Both universes are placed by their own real coordinates. There is no artistic multiplier anywhere in the pipeline.
• The two games do not agree on how many metres a light year is, so coordinates are normalised through metres rather than silently equated.
• The comparison runs only against the true 3D layout. Entering from the flat 2D layout morphs back to 3D first, and the layout toggle stays locked for the duration.
• Nothing is added for effect: no bounding sphere, no shell, no boundary, no glow around either cluster.
• Every system-attached overlay hides so the picture is stars against stars, and each one returns exactly as it was on exit.
• The imported star field is inert. It cannot be searched, hovered, clicked, routed through or counted.

The comparison is transient by design. It is not written to the address bar or remembered between visits, so a reload always returns you to the ordinary map.

Where the numbers come from

Every figure on this page comes from the pinned official EVE Online Static Data Export, build 3464040, the same data the map is built from: 5,485 solar systems, 13,978 directed stargate connections, 799 constellations and 70 regions, with real three-dimensional positions for every star. The spans and the bounding radius are computed from those positions rather than rounded off from a wiki. The foreign star field is prepared once, offline, into one compact file that loads on first use.

How to open it

1. Open the map with the link below. There is no direct address for this layer.
2. Click View in the left rail to open the flyout.
3. Choose Compare Universe Scale in that flyout.
4. Let the pullback settle, then read the scale figures in the corner.
5. Orbit the view. The label marks New Eden at the centre.
6. Click the toggle again to fly back to the ordinary map.

Part of EO-Map

Compare Universe Scale is one layer of EO-Map's interactive 3D map of New Eden. The same session plans stargate routes, shows current alliance sovereignty, paints system activity and flashes kills as they are reported, so the cluster you have just measured is the one you then use.

Related tools

• 2D map, to flatten the same cluster into the layout most players know.
• Route planner, for how long crossing it actually takes.
• Jump planner, for capital jump ranges in the same light years.
• System finder, to search those 5,485 systems by name and attributes.
• Cinematic mode, for the star field as an ambient view.
• All EO-Map features.

Frequently asked questions