White-light scanning interferometry (WLI) and phase shifting interferometry (PSI) are increasingly used for surface topography measurements, particularly for areal measurements. In this paper, we compare surface profiling results obtained from above two optical methods with those obtained from stylus instruments. For moderately rough surfaces ($Ra{approx}500;nm$), roughness measurements obtained with WLI and the stylus method seem to provide close agreement on the same roughness samples. For surface roughness measurements in the 50 nm to 300 nm range of Ra, discrepancies between WLI and the stylus method are observed. In some cases the discrepancy is as large as 109% of the value obtained with the stylus method. By contrast, the PSI results are in good agreement with those of the stylus technique.