> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.wherobots.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# ST_Area

Returns the spherical area of a geography in square meters, calculated on the sphere. The Earth is modeled as a sphere of radius `R = 6 371 008 m` (the mean Earth radius); the result is the area of the polygon's interior on that sphere. Returns `0.0` for non-areal geographies (points, linestrings) and for `NULL`.

Multi-polygons sum the children's areas; geography collections recurse into their members.

<img src="https://mintcdn.com/wherobots/yEl9QVsCpobSsWXg/images/sql-functions/ST_Area_geography/ST_Area_geography.svg?fit=max&auto=format&n=yEl9QVsCpobSsWXg&q=85&s=d33e0e9e0f1dcb0a4c4f7b5a30612549" alt="ST_Area on a Geography on the sphere" width="540" height="320" data-path="images/sql-functions/ST_Area_geography/ST_Area_geography.svg" />

The result is the area of the polygon's user-intended interior. If the input ring happens to be wound in the orientation that would describe the rest of the planet instead, Sedona returns the smaller of the two regions, so the answer is always bounded by half the surface of the Earth (\~2.55 × 10¹⁴ m²).

If you specifically want the WGS84 ellipsoidal value (which is \~0.5 % lower for typical shapes), convert via `ST_GeogToGeometry` first and use the geometry overload: `ST_Area(ST_GeogToGeometry(geog), true)`.

## Signatures

```sql theme={"system"}
ST_Area (A: Geography)
```

## Parameters

<ParamField body="A" type="Geography" required>
  The geography whose spherical area is returned.
</ParamField>

## Return type

<ResponseField type="Double">
  The spherical area in square meters (`0.0` for non-areal input).
</ResponseField>

## Example

```sql theme={"system"}
SELECT ST_Area(ST_GeogFromWKT('POLYGON ((0 0, 1 0, 1 1, 0 1, 0 0))'));
```

```
1.2364028804392242E10
```

That is approximately 12,364 km² — the spherical area of a 1°×1° box near the equator.