The largest urban area in the United States is New York, followed by Los Angeles and Miami. New York has 14.2 million people on 3,031 km² of built-up land. 26 urban areas in the United States have at least 1 million people or are a national capital; the table lists them all.
| # | City | Population |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | New York | 14.2 million |
| 2 | Los Angeles | 13.5 million |
| 3 | Miami | 5.73 million |
| 4 | Chicago | 5.32 million |
| 5 | San Francisco–San Jose | 4.72 million |
| 6 | Houston | 4.30 million |
| 7 | Washington D.C. | 3.47 million |
| 8 | Phoenix | 2.61 million |
| 9 | Dallas | 2.58 million |
| 10 | Denver | 2.43 million |
| 11 | Las Vegas | 2.37 million |
| 12 | Philadelphia | 2.29 million |
| 13 | Seattle | 2.10 million |
| 14 | San Diego | 1.98 million |
| 15 | Detroit | 1.92 million |
| 16 | Portland | 1.84 million |
| 17 | Mesa–Chandler | 1.72 million |
| 18 | Sacramento | 1.70 million |
| 19 | Boston | 1.67 million |
| 20 | Austin | 1.58 million |
| 21 | San Antonio | 1.51 million |
| 22 | Orlando | 1.23 million |
| 23 | Minneapolis–Saint Paul | 1.22 million |
| 24 | Baltimore | 1.13 million |
| 25 | Salt Lake City | 1.11 million |
| 26 | Atlanta | 602,708 |
Urban area = contiguous built-up land and the people living in it in 2025, drawn the same way for every city regardless of administrative boundaries. Source: GHSL Urban Centre Database R2024A, European Commission, Joint Research Centre (CC BY 4.0); some names adjusted to the city names people use, and country attribution follows the dataset.
Official city limits are drawn differently in every country: some take in farmland and mountains, others stop at the historic core. Ranking cities by those limits mostly ranks boundary decisions. These lists use the built-up area instead, so a city's figure includes its suburbs wherever they are continuous with it, and nothing beyond.
For figures inside official limits, see the city-limits rankings; for the background, read how to compare city sizes honestly. Click any city to see it on a map at the same scale as another.