A quick answer to "what county am I in?"
Many forms ask for your county, but most people only know their city and ZIP code. So the question "what county do I live in?" comes up more often than you would think. This county finder gives you the answer in a second. Press "Find my county" and the tool uses your device's location to show what county you are in right now. You can also type an address, a city or a ZIP code to see what county an address is in, or simply click any place on the map.
The answer is more than a name. The county outline is drawn on the map, so you can see where it begins and ends. You also get its 5-digit FIPS code, its land and water area, its population from the latest Census Bureau estimates, and a list of the neighboring counties. Click a neighbor to jump to it. You can download every county boundary as a GeoJSON or KML file, too.
The county lookup does not depend on a third-party service. The tool checks your point against the official county outlines from the US Census Bureau, which this site keeps on its own server. Only the address search uses a geocoding service, to turn your text into a point on the map. My tip: when I need to know what county I am in close to a county line, I zoom in and check the outline on the map. It shows at once how near the line I am.
What the county finder shows you
After a lookup, the panel next to the map lists these facts about the county.
- County name and state. The full official name, such as "Cook County", "Orleans Parish" or "Richmond city", with its state. The type is listed too, because not every county is called a county.
- County boundary on the map. The outline of the county is drawn in blue, with a red dot at your point. When the point is in open water, the nearest county is drawn with a dashed line instead.
- FIPS code and GNIS code. The 5-digit FIPS code (for example
17031for Cook County, Illinois) is the standard ID for joining county data from the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and many other sources. The GNIS code is the county's ID in the federal Geographic Names Information System. - Population and density. The July 2024 population estimate, the April 2020 base count, the change since 2020 in percent, and the number of people per square mile and per km².
- Land and water area. Both in square miles and in km². Some counties have more water than land. Cook County, for example, includes 689.7 mi² of Lake Michigan.
- Neighboring counties. Every county that shares a land border, including counties across a state line. Click one to see it on the map.
- Share and download. Copy the result as text, copy a link that opens the same point, send it on WhatsApp, or download the county boundary as GeoJSON or KML.
How to find your county, step by step
There are three ways to start: your device's location, a search, or a click on the map. Here is each of them.
The map of the United States opens. The panel on the right explains the three ways to find a county.
Allow the browser to share your location. The map moves to you, draws your county and lists its facts. Here the device is in downtown Denver, so the answer to "what county am I in now?" is Denver County, Colorado.
Type a US address, a place name or a ZIP code and press Enter. Here the search for "Space Needle, Seattle" shows that it is in King County, Washington.
Click the map to see the county of that spot. This works well near a state line: here a point in Kansas City, Kansas, falls in Wyandotte County, while the city center across the line is in Jackson County, Missouri.
Click a name in the list of neighboring counties. The map shows that county and its own facts and neighbors. Here it is Johnson County, Kansas.
The county outlines follow the shoreline, so a point in a lake or the sea has no county. The tool then names the nearest county and its distance, and draws it with a dashed line. Here a point in the Gulf of Mexico is 42.6 km from Galveston County, Texas.
Parishes, boroughs and other county equivalents
The Census Bureau counts 3,144 counties and county equivalents in the 50 states and DC. Most of them are called counties, but some states use other names or other kinds of areas. The tool shows the type of each one.
- Parishes in Louisiana. Louisiana has 64 parishes in place of counties. The name goes back to the church parishes of the French and Spanish period.
- Boroughs and census areas in Alaska. Alaska has 30 county equivalents: boroughs, city and boroughs, municipalities and census areas. Large parts of the state belong to no borough, so the Census Bureau splits that land into census areas for its statistics.
- Independent cities. An independent city belongs to no county and counts as its own county. Virginia has 38 of them, such as Richmond city and Falls Church city. Baltimore city in Maryland and St. Louis city in Missouri are also independent cities, and Carson City in Nevada is counted on its own as well.
- Planning regions in Connecticut. Connecticut abolished its county governments in 1960. Since 2022, the Census Bureau uses the state's 9 planning regions as county equivalents, in place of the 8 old counties. So a Hartford address now shows "Capitol Planning Region".
- The District of Columbia. Washington, DC, has no counties. The whole district counts as one county equivalent, with FIPS code
11001. - Puerto Rico and the island territories. Puerto Rico has 78 municipios. American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the US Virgin Islands add 13 more county equivalents, such as districts and islands. The tool finds all of them.
For forms, use the name exactly as the tool shows it. "Orleans Parish" or "Anchorage Municipality" is the correct answer to "county", even without the word county in it.
What a county FIPS code means
Every county has a 5-digit FIPS code. The first two digits are the state, and the last three are the county inside that state. The code never depends on the spelling of a name, so it is the safest way to match county data between files and databases.
Cook County, Illinois = 17031 17 → Illinois (state code) 031 → Cook County (county code inside Illinois) Autauga County, Alabama = 01001 Richmond city, Virginia = 51760 Capitol Planning Region, Connecticut = 09110
County codes were first given out in alphabetical order with odd numbers (001, 003, 005, ...), so that even numbers were free for new counties later. Virginia's independent cities have codes from 510 up. The tool shows the FIPS code of every county, and the Copy button includes it.
US county facts in numbers
These numbers come from the same Census files the tool uses: the 2024 county boundaries and the Vintage 2024 population estimates.
Texas has the most counties, 254, followed by Georgia with 159. Delaware has the fewest, only 3. Hawaii and Rhode Island have 5 each.
Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area in Alaska has 145,769 square miles of land, about as much as the whole state of Montana. Outside Alaska, the largest is San Bernardino County, California, with 20,068 mi² (51,976 km²).
Falls Church city in Virginia has only 2.05 square miles (5.30 km²) of land.
Los Angeles County, California, had 9,757,179 people in July 2024, more than 40 of the 50 states. Next come Cook County, Illinois (5,182,617) and Harris County, Texas (5,009,302).
Loving County, Texas, had an estimated 48 people. Kalawao County in Hawaii, on the island of Molokai, had 81.
Half of all Americans live in just 145 of the 3,144 counties. The median county has only 26,138 people.
How the tool finds the county
Here is what happens between your click and the answer, with real numbers.
The county outlines
The tool uses the Census Bureau's 2024 Cartographic Boundary File at a scale of 1:500,000. It holds 3,235 counties and county equivalents, drawn with 4,785 rings and 1,029,297 points. The site keeps this file on its own server, in a compact form of about 8 MB, so a lookup needs no outside service.
A lookup takes about 0.05 milliseconds on the server. First the tool skips every county whose bounding box does not contain the point. Then it runs an exact test on the few counties that are left.
Point in polygon: the ray test
To check whether a point is inside a county, imagine a line that starts at the point and goes east forever. Count how many times it crosses the county outline:
odd number of crossings → the point is inside even number of crossings → the point is outside An edge from (x1, y1) to (x2, y2) is crossed when (y1 > y) ≠ (y2 > y) and x < x1 + (y − y1) × (x2 − x1) / (y2 − y1) x = longitude, y = latitude of your point
The same count handles counties with islands and counties with holes. A hole is a separate ring, so a line that enters the hole crosses one more edge and the count becomes even again.
Worked example: Cook County
The density in the panel is the population divided by the land area. For Cook County, Illinois:
Land area: 2,447.3 km² = 2,447.3 / 2.59 ≈ 944.9 mi²
Population: 5,182,617 (July 2024 estimate)
Density: 5,182,617 / 944.9 ≈ 5,485 people per mi²
5,182,617 / 2,447.3 ≈ 2,118 people per km²
Change: (5,182,617 − 5,278,969) / 5,278,969 ≈ −1.8 %
since April 2020Water area is not part of the density. That matters for Cook County, because it also has 1,786.3 km² of Lake Michigan inside its borders.
Neighbors and points in water
Two counties are neighbors when their outlines share at least one point. In the Census files, a shared border uses the very same points in both counties, so the tool can find every neighbor this way. On average, a county has 5.8 neighbors. Island counties such as Nantucket County, Massachusetts, and Honolulu County, Hawaii, have none on land.
The outlines stop at the shoreline. When your point is in the sea or a large lake, no county contains it, so the tool measures the distance to the edge of each county nearby and shows the closest one within 100 km. If none is that close, the point is outside the United States.
When you need to know your county
These are the most common reasons people look up their county.
- Forms and applications. Voter registration, jury duty, court papers, vehicle registration and many job and benefit forms ask for your county. The tool gives you the exact official name.
- Property tax and real estate. Property taxes, deeds and building permits are handled by the county. Before you buy a house, check which county it is in, because the tax rate can change at the county line.
- Sales tax. In many states, part of the sales tax is set by the county. A business that ships goods needs to know the county of each delivery address.
- Weather alerts. The National Weather Service lists its watches and warnings by county. When a storm warning names a county, the tool tells you at once if it is yours.
- GIS work and data joins. Most US statistics are published by county and keyed by FIPS code. Look up the code here, or download the county boundary as GeoJSON or KML for QGIS or Google Earth.
- Travel and county collecting. On a road trip you cross county lines all the time, and "what county am I in now?" is often the first question when you need a local office or hear a weather warning. Some travelers even try to visit every county in a state, or in the whole country. Press "Find my county" at each stop, or click along your route to see which counties you have passed through.
- Family history. Birth, marriage, land and court records are kept by the county. If you know the town of your ancestors, the tool tells you which county records to search. County lines have moved over time, so for old records check the boundaries of that year too.
Frequently asked questions
Short answers to the questions people ask most about finding their county.
1. What county am I in right now?
To see what county you are in right now, press "Find my county" at the top of the tool and allow your browser to share its location. The tool shows the county at your current position, with its outline on the map. On a phone, the location usually comes from GPS and is accurate to a few meters. On a computer, it often comes from Wi-Fi and can be off by a few hundred meters.
2. What county am I in by address?
Type your address in the search box and press Enter. Add the city and state for a clear result, for example "100 Main St, Springfield, IL". The tool finds the address on the map, then looks up the county at that point and draws its outline, so you see at once what county the address is in. You can also type coordinates as "latitude, longitude".
3. Can I find the county from a ZIP code?
Yes. Type the 5-digit ZIP code and the tool shows the county at the center of that ZIP code area. Be careful with one thing: ZIP codes are mail delivery areas, and many of them cross county lines. If the ZIP code is near a county line, search the full street address to be sure.
4. What is a county FIPS code?
It is a 5-digit code that identifies a county. The first 2 digits are the state and the last 3 the county, so 06037 is Los Angeles County, California (06 = California). FIPS codes are used by the Census Bureau and in most US data sets to join county data.
5. Why does the tool show a parish, borough or city instead of a county?
Some places use other kinds of areas in the role of a county. Louisiana has parishes, Alaska has boroughs and census areas, and Virginia has 38 independent cities that belong to no county. The Census Bureau calls them county equivalents, and the tool shows each one with its official name.
6. What happened to the counties of Connecticut?
Connecticut stopped having county governments in 1960, and since 2022 the Census Bureau uses the state's 9 planning regions in their place. The tool shows the planning region, for example "Capitol Planning Region" for Hartford. Some older forms may still ask for one of the 8 historical counties.
7. Why does the tool say "No US county at this point"?
The point is in open water, such as the sea, the Great Lakes or a large bay, or it is outside the United States. The Census county outlines follow the shoreline. The tool then shows the nearest county within 100 km and its distance. Legally, many coastal counties also cover some of the water next to them.
8. How accurate is the result near a county line?
The outlines come from the Census Bureau's 1:500,000 boundary file, which is a little simplified. Away from the border, the answer is always right. Within a short distance of a county line, the simplified line can differ from the legal one. For a property right on the line, check the county's own GIS map or ask the county office.
9. Is my location stored or shared?
Your browser asks before it shares your location, and you can say no. The tool sends only the coordinates to this site's own server to find the county, and the lookup does not save them. An address search is sent to a geocoding service (LocationIQ, OpenCage or Geoapify, with Photon and Nominatim as a backup) to find the place on the map.
10. Where do the population numbers come from?
From the Census Bureau's Vintage 2024 county estimates: the population on July 1, 2024, and the April 1, 2020 base. These estimates cover the 50 states and DC. Puerto Rico and the island territories are not part of that file, so the tool shows no population for them.
11. Can I download a county boundary?
Yes. Below the facts, press GeoJSON or KML. You get the full Census outline of the county with its name, FIPS code, area and population as attributes. GeoJSON opens in QGIS and most web maps, and KML opens in Google Earth.
12. Does the tool work outside the United States?
No, it covers US counties only: the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands and the US Virgin Islands. A search for a place in another country gives a message instead of a result.
Data sources and credits
The tool is built on public data and open-source software. Here is what each part does.
- US Census Bureau: Cartographic Boundary Files 2024 · Public domain (U.S. Government)County outlines, names, FIPS and GNIS codes, and land and water areas (2024 Cartographic Boundary File, 1:500,000).
- US Census Bureau: County Population Estimates, Vintage 2024 · Public domain (U.S. Government)Population on July 1, 2024 and the April 1, 2020 base, for every county in the 50 states and DC.
- Leaflet 1.9 · BSD-2-ClauseDraws the interactive map, the county outlines and the markers.
- Protomaps (hosted by KONAKTIVE), CARTO, OpenStreetMap · ODbL data, provider termsThe street basemap: Protomaps vector tiles hosted by KONAKTIVE, with CARTO and OpenStreetMap as backups.
- Esri World Imagery · Esri terms of useThe satellite basemap.
- LocationIQ, OpenCage, Geoapify, Photon, Nominatim · ODbL data, provider termsTurns a typed address, place or ZIP code into a point on the map. Only used for searches.
The Census data is public domain. The county lookup itself runs on this site's server and calls no outside service.
Related tools
County boundaries are generalized Census Bureau outlines for statistical use. For legal, tax or property decisions, confirm the county with the county office. County boundaries: US Census Bureau (public domain). Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors, drawn with Protomaps (hosted by KONAKTIVE), with CARTO as the fallback. Satellite imagery: Esri. Address search: OpenStreetMap data through LocationIQ, OpenCage, Geoapify, Photon and Nominatim.
