Largest US Cities: Ranked by Estimated Population

New York, NY tops our list of the largest US cities with an estimated 18,713,220 people, followed by Los Angeles, CA and Chicago, IL. The table ranks the 100 largest places in the data. Each name opens a page with ZIP codes, nearby cities and distances.

What is the ranking?

What stands out?

50 of the 100 places have more than one million estimated residents, and the 100th has about 439,815. The states with the most places among the top 20 are New York (3), California (3), Florida (2). Because the data can include the wider urban area, some cities appear larger than their legal population, which is why the top of the list can differ from the Census Bureau's city-proper ranking.

Geographically, the 100 places on this list are spread over 38 states and territories. The most represented are California 12; New York 9; Florida 8; Texas 8; Ohio 6; Pennsylvania 4. By time zone, the split is Eastern 49, Central 24, Pacific 16, Mountain 10. The county that appears most often is New York County, NY, with 2 entries. Patterns like these show which regions produce the extreme values in the ranking, and they change if you tighten or loosen the population cutoff.

Use the table to jump to any city page for ZIP codes, nearby places and distances, or compare with the state-level lists that rank the same measure inside each state.

Frequently asked questions

Which city is first on this list? New York, NY, in New York.

Which state appears most often? California, with 12 entries.

Are small towns included? Only places with at least 5,000 residents in our data have a page and a ranking, so very small communities are not shown. They still appear on county pages.

Is this an official ranking? No. It is calculated from one dataset using estimates, and official rankings from the Census Bureau can differ because of different boundaries and years.

How is this list made?

The data comes from the SimpleMaps US Cities Database. Population is an estimate, and density is converted from people per square kilometer to people per square mile. Estimates for large cities can reflect the wider urban area rather than the legal city limits, so use the lists to compare places inside one dataset rather than as official counts. See why population figures differ, and check the Census Bureau for official figures. The rankings are rebuilt whenever the site is regenerated from a newer copy of the data, so the date shown on the guides and legal pages tells you roughly how fresh they are. If you spot a result that looks wrong, please send us a correction with the page address.

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