Natural numbers and Whole numbers have all the numbers in common except zero and that is the major difference between both of them. This difference makes Natural numbers counting in nature.
| Natural numbers | Whole numbers |
| The set notation of natural numbers is {1,2,...N} | The set notation of Whole numbers is {0,1,2,...N} |
| The smallest natural number is 1 | The smallest natural number is 0 |
| All non zero positive integers are a part of natural numbers | All positive integers are a part of whole numbers |
| A natural number is a subset of the Whole number | The whole number is a superset of natural number |
| Natural numbers are represented by the letter N | Whole numbers are represented by the letter W |