The largest mines in the world

Which is the biggest mine in the world depends on what you measure: metal produced, rock moved, depth or width. Here are the biggest copper and gold mines by what they produced in 2025, and the holders of the other records, on one map.

Short answer

By output, the world's largest copper mine is Escondida in Chile (1.35 million tonnes of copper in 2025) and the largest gold mine is Nevada Gold Mines in the US (2.6 million ounces). The deepest mine is Mponeng in South Africa, about 4 km down, and the deepest open pit is Bingham Canyon in Utah, more than 1.2 km deep.

1.35 Mtcopper from Escondida in 2025, the biggest copper mine

2.6 Mozgold from Nevada Gold Mines in 2025, the biggest gold mine

~4 kmdepth of Mponeng, the deepest mine

1.2 kmdepth of Bingham Canyon, the deepest open pit

Map of the largest mines in the world

The biggest copper mines (orange, sized by output), gold mines (yellow) and record holders (white). Filter by kind, hover or tap a mine for its numbers, and tap again to jump to its row below.

Copper (size = 2025 output)GoldRecord holders

Hover or tap a mine; tap again to jump to its row. Positions are the mines' published locations, rounded.

The biggest mines, ranked by output

Rankings by what each mine produced in 2025, on a 100% basis (the whole mine, not one owner's share). Click a column heading to sort.

The 10 biggest copper mines, by 2025 output

#	Mine	Country	Owners	Copper, 2025
1	Escondida	Chile	BHP (operator), Rio Tinto, JECO	1,347.6 kt
2	Tenke Fungurume	DR Congo	CMOC (operator)	519 kt
3	Grasberg	Indonesia	Freeport-McMoRan (operator), MIND ID	460.4 kt
4	Las Bambas	Peru	MMG (operator), CITIC, Guoxin	411.3 kt
5	Buenavista	Mexico	Southern Copper	409.4 kt
6	Collahuasi	Chile	Glencore, Anglo American, Mitsui	404.1 kt
7	KGHM mines (Lubin, Polkowice-Sieroszowice, Rudna)	Poland	KGHM Polska Miedź	401.1 kt
8	Cerro Verde	Peru	Freeport-McMoRan (operator), Sumitomo, Buenaventura	391.5 kt
9	Kamoa-Kakula	DR Congo	Ivanhoe Mines (operator), Zijin, DRC government	385.8 kt
10	Antamina	Peru	BHP, Glencore, Teck, Mitsubishi	368 kt

Copper metal produced in 2025, 100% basis. Source: mining.com (May 2026), from company reports.

The biggest gold mines, by 2025 output

#	Mine	Country	Owners	Gold, 2025
1	Nevada Gold Mines	United States	Barrick (operator) 61.5%, Newmont 38.5%	2,595 koz
2	Muruntau	Uzbekistan	Navoi Mining & Metallurgy	1,708 koz
3	Olimpiada	Russia	Polyus	1,357 koz
4	Kazzinc Consolidated	Kazakhstan	Glencore 70%	947 koz
5	Grasberg	Indonesia	Freeport-McMoRan, MIND ID	937 koz
6	Almalyk	Uzbekistan	Almalyk MMC	750 koz
7	Blagodatnoye	Russia	Polyus	736 koz
8	Detour Lake	Canada	Agnico Eagle	693 koz
9	Kibali	DR Congo	Barrick 45%, AngloGold Ashanti 45%, SOKIMO 10%	673 koz
10	Ahafo	Ghana	Newmont 90%, Ghana 10%	664 koz
11	Canadian Malartic	Canada	Agnico Eagle	643 koz
12	Pueblo Viejo	Dominican Republic	Barrick 60%, Newmont 40%	632 koz
13	Kumtor	Kyrgyzstan	Kyrgyzaltyn	592 koz
14	Paracatu	Brazil	Kinross Gold	587 koz
15	Lihir	Papua New Guinea	Newmont	585 koz
16	Boddington	Australia	Newmont	565 koz
17	Fekola	Mali	B2Gold	531 koz
18	Yanacocha	Peru	Newmont	515 koz
19	Salares Norte	Chile	Gold Fields	505 koz

Gold produced in 2025, 100% basis, thousand troy ounces (koz). Source: mining.com (March 2026), from S&P Global. The source lists Sukari (Egypt) 20th with a misprinted figure, so it is left out here.

Biggest by size and depth

Record	Mine	What it is
Deepest mine	Mponeng, South Africa	Gold, mined about 4 km below the surface (Harmony Gold). Source
Deepest open pit	Bingham Canyon, Utah	Copper. Over 1.2 km deep and 4 km across; mined since 1906 (Rio Tinto Kennecott). Source
Biggest copper mine	Escondida, Chile	1.35 million tonnes of copper in 2025, more than twice the next biggest (mining.com). Source
Biggest gold mine	Nevada Gold Mines, US	2.6 million ounces in 2025 from 10 underground and 12 open-pit mines run as one complex (mining.com). Source
Largest underground iron ore mine	Kiruna, Sweden	LKAB's mine is the world's largest underground iron ore mine; the town is being moved to make room for it. Source
Biggest diamond pit	Mir, Russia	About 525 m deep and 1.2 km across; mined open pit from 1957 to 2001, then underground (Alrosa). Source
Biggest iron ore province	Carajás, Brazil	Vale's Serra Norte and S11D mines in Pará; S11D alone produced a record 86 million tonnes in 2025. Source

The largest copper mines in the world

The ten biggest copper mines produced 4.9 million tonnes in 2025, more than a fifth of world mine output. Escondida is in a class of its own. Behind it, 2025 reshuffled the order: a mud rush in September shut much of Grasberg in Indonesia, and seismic flooding cut output at Kamoa-Kakula in the DR Congo, while Tenke Fungurume rose to second. Chile's state company Codelco, a giant by total output, has no single mine in the top ten. More on the story of the pits in the biggest copper mines.

Escondida1,348 kt

Tenke Fungurume519 kt

Grasberg460 kt

Las Bambas411 kt

Buenavista409 kt

Collahuasi404 kt

KGHM mines401 kt

Cerro Verde392 kt

Kamoa-Kakula386 kt

Antamina368 kt

Copper produced in 2025, thousand tonnes (mining.com).

The largest gold mines in the world

World mine production reached a record 3,672 tonnes of gold in 2025 (World Gold Council, via mining.com). Nevada Gold Mines, a complex of 10 underground and 12 open-pit mines along the Carlin and Cortez trends, has led since Barrick and Newmont pooled their Nevada mines in 2019. Uzbekistan's Muruntau is the biggest single pit. Africa's largest, Kibali in the DR Congo, ranks ninth: see the largest gold mines in Africa.

Nevada Gold Mines2.60 Moz

Muruntau1.71 Moz

Olimpiada1.36 Moz

Kazzinc Consolidated0.95 Moz

Grasberg0.94 Moz

Almalyk0.75 Moz

Blagodatnoye0.74 Moz

Detour Lake0.69 Moz

Kibali0.67 Moz

Ahafo0.66 Moz

Gold produced in 2025, million ounces (mining.com).

The biggest mines from space

Pick a mine. Each view is live satellite imagery at the same scale as the bar in the corner.

Satellite view of the Escondida copper mine's open pits in the Atacama Desert — Escondida, Atacama Desert, Chile: two open pits and the concentrators of the world's biggest copper mine. Satellite imagery: Powered by Esri · Esri, Vantor, Earthstar Geographics, streamed live; image dates vary.

How to measure the biggest mine

By metal produced: the rankings above. Fair within one metal, meaningless across metals (a tonne of gold is worth thousands of tonnes of copper).
By rock moved: the big open pits move hundreds of millions of tonnes of ore and waste a year, so iron ore and copper pits such as Carajás, the Pilbara mines and Escondida top any tonnage list.
By size: depth (Mponeng underground, Bingham Canyon open pit) or footprint (Chuquicamata, Muruntau).
By value: output times price, which today puts the largest copper and gold mines and the Pilbara iron ore mines on top.

For one mineral country by country, open its mines guide, for example copper mines, gold mines or iron ore mines.

Questions

What is the largest mine in the world?

By copper output, Escondida in Chile, which produced 1.35 million tonnes of copper in 2025 (mining.com). By gold output, Nevada Gold Mines in the US, with 2.6 million ounces. By depth, Mponeng in South Africa, about 4 km underground. By the size of a single pit, Bingham Canyon in Utah, over 1.2 km deep and 4 km across.

What is the largest copper mine in the world?

Escondida, in Chile's Atacama Desert, run by BHP with Rio Tinto and Japanese partners. It produced 1,347.6 thousand tonnes of copper in 2025, more than twice the next biggest, Tenke Fungurume in the DR Congo (about 519 thousand tonnes).

What is the largest gold mine in the world?

Nevada Gold Mines, the joint venture of Barrick (61.5%) and Newmont (38.5%), with 2,595 thousand ounces in 2025. Muruntau in Uzbekistan was second with 1,708 thousand ounces and is the largest single open-pit gold mine.

What is the largest copper mine in the US?

Morenci in Arizona produced about 313 thousand tonnes in 2025, just outside the world top 10; Bingham Canyon in Utah is the deepest and one of the oldest (mining.com, Rio Tinto).

What is the deepest mine in the world?

Mponeng gold mine near Johannesburg, South Africa, which works ore around 4 km below the surface.

Where are the biggest gold mines in the world?

Spread across the US (Nevada), Uzbekistan (Muruntau, Almalyk), Russia (Olimpiada, Blagodatnoye), Kazakhstan, Indonesia (Grasberg), Canada (Detour Lake, Canadian Malartic), Africa (Kibali, Ahafo, Fekola) and Latin America. See the map and the gold tab above.

Sources

Checked against the sources above on 24 October 2026.

Figures are as each source publishes them. Company output is shown as the mines report it; nothing here rates a company. Not investment advice.

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Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: Haul trucks by Lechhabmed, CC BY-SA 4.0; Autonomous trucks by RobSimmons223311, CC BY-SA 4.0; Drilling and blasting by Siim Roov, CC BY-SA 4.0. Pictures: Mijnramp Bois du Caizier, Marcinelle, België. Schacht, Rossem, Wim van / Anefo / Europeana (Public Domain Mark 1.0).