Vector-raster conversion is one of the classic research topics in the field of Geographical Information Systems (GIS). The algorithms commonly used in GIS are devoted to maintaining the vector polygons’ shape characteristics, but neglect the gain and loss of a polygon’s area, which is another important attribute. This paper proposes an equal-area conversion model based on an area compensation optimization principle. According to the topological relationship among polygons and boundary grids, a neighborhood compensation principle was adopted to assign the attributes of boundary grids and a global optimization algorithm was developed to minimize area distortion in the whole data set. Two experiments were designed and the results indicated that this algorithm not only guaranteed the area error is as small as possible, but also has the advantage as being adaptive to polygon shape and spatial structure.