About the data
Every county is compared with every other US county, and every state with the other states.
Each measure becomes a percentile from 0 to 100, where 100 is always best. For crime, deaths, disaster risk, costs and commutes, the lowest value is best. A category score averages its measures’ percentiles and is then scaled so all categories have the same spread around 50, so each counts equally. The overall score is the average of safety, cost of living, education and quality of life. 50 is a typical place, and most land between 35 and 65. Your priorities lets you weight the categories differently, and add weather.
Grades: A 65 and up, B 55–64, C 45–54, D 35–44, F under 35.
Each category lists a county’s own figures next to its state’s and the US figures. Under the state and US columns, Difference shows whether the county is higher or lower, as a share of that figure (hover for the exact gap). Rank shows where it ranks instead: “ranked 75%” means it does better than 75% of the counties in its state, or in the US. A green arrow or dot means the county does better, red means worse.
Compare puts any two places side by side, counties or states, in any state. The better value in each row is highlighted.
A county gets an overall score only if all four categories have data and at least 60% of the measures are present. Small counties often have suppressed data, and without this rule they rank at the top on just a few numbers. Top 10 lists only include counties with at least 10,000 people.
What’s measured
- Safety: violent and property crime reported to police (FBI, 2024–2025 average), homicide, firearm and traffic death rates, and natural disaster risk (FEMA’s expected yearly building damage).
- Cost of living: rent and home prices compared with local incomes, the share of households with severe housing costs, and everyday prices for goods and services (BEA).
- Education: high school graduation, 3rd-grade reading and math, and adults with some college.
- Quality of life: life expectancy, air pollution, unemployment, broadband and park access, and commute time.
- Weather (not in the overall score unless you turn it on): net pleasant days, from NOAA’s daily weather for every county, 2016–2025. A pleasant day has a high of 60–85°F, a low of 32°F or warmer and less than 0.1 inch of rain. Days of 95°F or more and days that stay below freezing are subtracted. Rainy days are shown too.
- Also shown, not scored: population, income, median rent and home value, and climate (July highs, January lows, yearly rain and snow).
Limitations
- Crime rates for counties add up each police agency’s reports. They are hidden where agencies serving under 80% of residents reported, and for Alaska and Connecticut, whose agencies the FBI doesn’t assign to today’s county areas. State rates are the FBI’s own estimates.
- Everyday prices are published for metro areas and for each state’s rural counties as a group, not for individual counties.
- Connecticut replaced its counties with 9 planning regions in 2022. Some measures are still only published for the old counties, so those are borrowed from the old county covering most of each region.
- City search takes you to the county a city is in. Cities that span several counties go to the one containing their center.
- Weather counts each county’s average over its whole area, so a county with deserts or mountains can look hotter or colder than its towns. Humidity isn’t measured, so muggy summers count only by their heat. State and US figures average the counties, weighted by population. Alaska and Hawaii aren’t covered.
- Climate averages don’t cover Hawaii or Washington, DC.
Sources
