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How Big Is a Dust Mite?

A dust mite is about 0.012 in (300 µm) long. That is about 5,700 times smaller than the average man. A microscopic relative of spiders that lives in household dust.

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How big is a dust mite compared to the average man?

A dust mite is about 5,700 times smaller than the average man. The average man is 5,700× the size of a dust mite: about 5,700 dust mites stacked up would match it.

Dust Mite size facts

House dust mites are about 0.2 to 0.3 mm long, too small to see without magnification.
They have eight legs, like spiders.

How does a dust mite compare to other things?

A dust mite next to 25 things of similar size, plus some everyday references:

Thing	Size	Compared to Dust mite
Sun	865,000 miles (1,393,000 km) across	4.64 trillion× bigger
Earth	7,920 miles (12,740 km) across	42.5 billion× bigger
Mount Everest	5.5 miles (8.849 km)	29.5 million× bigger
Eiffel Tower	1,083 ft (330 m)	1.1 million× bigger
School bus	40 ft (12.2 m) long	40,700× bigger
Average man (world)	5 ft 7 in (171 cm)	5,700× bigger
Average woman (world)	5 ft 3 in (159 cm)	5,300× bigger
Credit card	3.4 in (8.56 cm) long	285× bigger
Apple	3.1 in (8 cm) long	267× bigger
Baseball	2.9 in (7.4 cm) across	247× bigger
Tennis ball	2.6 in (6.7 cm) across	223× bigger
Wolf spider	2.4 in (6 cm) long	200× bigger
Bee hummingbird	2.2 in (5.5 cm) long	183× bigger
Golf ball	1.7 in (4.27 cm) across	142× bigger
US quarter	0.96 in (2.43 cm) across	80.9× bigger
Honeybee	0.59 in (1.5 cm) long	50× bigger
Ladybug	0.28 in (7 mm) long	23.3× bigger
Grain of rice	0.26 in (6.5 mm) long	21.7× bigger
Ant	0.16 in (4 mm) long	13.3× bigger
Flea	0.098 in (2.5 mm) long	8.3× bigger
Mustard seed	0.059 in (1.5 mm) across	5× bigger
Grain of sand	0.02 in (500 µm) long	0.0079 in (200 µm) bigger
Human hair (width)	70 µm across	4.3× smaller
Red blood cell	7.5 µm across	40× smaller
E. coli bacterium	2 µm long	150× smaller

Where do these numbers come from?

Sizes are typical adult or reported values, rounded for readability. Read how we measure and compare sizes.

Silhouettes from PhyloPic: Dust mite by Birgit Lang. See credits.