Methodology · what counts as a city
19,479 cities across 50 states + DC.
The state pages cover every U.S. city for which the Census Bureau publishes annual estimates under the Population Estimates Program: standard incorporated places, the eight consolidated city-county governments (Indianapolis, Nashville, Louisville, Athens-Clarke, Augusta-Richmond, Milford CT, Greeley County KS, Butte-Silver Bow MT), and Washington DC. Census-designated places (CDPs) are excluded with one named exception — Urban Honolulu, which Census reports under PEP despite a statistical functional status.
Within-state ranks use standard competition ranking ("1224"): tied cities share the lower rank and the next rank is skipped. Per-state ranks are pre-computed in the dataset (state_rank_pop_2024) — the same number you see on a city profile and on the state ranking page.