How many counties are there in the United States?
You will see 3,142, 3,143 and 3,144 quoted as the answer. All three are defensible, and the difference is mostly Connecticut.
There are 3,144 counties and county-equivalents in the fifty states and the District of Columbia. That is the current figure, it is what this site’s maps and tables are built on, and it is the number to use unless your question is narrower than the one most people are asking.
You have probably also seen 3,142 and 3,143. Neither is a typo. Each answers a different question about which entities are being counted, and as of when.
Counties, and things that are not counties
Only 2,999 of the 3,144 entities carry the legal type “County”. The rest are county-equivalents: units that sit in the same slot in the statistical and administrative hierarchy without carrying the word. Louisiana has 64 parishes. Alaska has 30 county-equivalents, made up of boroughs, cities and boroughs, municipalities and census areas. Forty are independent cities, thirty-eight of them in Virginia, plus Baltimore city, Maryland and St. Louis city, Missouri. Two entities have no type word at all: the District of Columbia, and Carson City, Nevada, whose name is simply Carson City.
| Legal type | Count |
|---|---|
| County | 2,999 |
| Parish (Louisiana) | 64 |
| Independent city | 40 |
| Borough (Alaska) | 13 |
| Census Area (Alaska) | 11 |
| Planning Region (Connecticut) | 9 |
| City and Borough (Alaska) | 4 |
| Municipality (Alaska) | 2 |
| No type word (District of Columbia, Carson City) | 2 |
| Total | 3,144 |
So “how many counties” has a literal answer of 2,999 and a useful answer of 3,144. Almost nobody wants 2,999, because almost nobody wants a national map with Louisiana and Alaska missing from it. For what an equivalent actually is, start with what a county is and what it does and the independent city explainer, which covers why Virginia contributes 133 entities: 95 counties and 38 independent cities.
Where 3,142, 3,143 and 3,144 each come from
The three numbers are snapshots of the same list at different moments, with one extra wrinkle about whether the District of Columbia is counted as a county or listed beside them.
The Census Bureau’s own house phrasing is “the nation’s 3,143 counties and the District of Columbia”. Read that carefully: it is 3,143 plus one, which is 3,144. The Bureau is not disagreeing with the total, it is holding DC out of the noun and adding it back at the end. Anyone who quotes the first half of that sentence and stops has published 3,143 as the total.
3,143 is also where the full list stood before 2022, since Connecticut’s nine planning regions replaced eight counties and so added a net row. The two versions of 3,143 are reached from opposite directions, and the number on its own will not tell you which one a source meant.
3,142 belongs to the 2010s. Two events moved the count during that stretch. Bedford city, Virginia gave up its independent city status and reverted to a town inside Bedford County on 1 July 2013, which removed a row. Alaska put one back on 2 January 2019, when Chugach Census Area (02063) and Copper River Census Area (02066) replaced the single Valdez-Cordova Census Area (02261). Between those two dates the arithmetic on this list comes to 3,142. Neither event changed a boundary on the ground for anyone outside the places involved, and both changed the national count.
| Universe being counted | Number |
|---|---|
| Entities legally titled “County” | 2,999 |
| Counties and county-equivalents, fifty states plus DC | 3,144 |
| The same, phrased as counties beside DC | 3,143 plus DC |
| The same list before the 2022 Connecticut change | 3,143 |
| The same list between the 2013 and 2019 changes above | 3,142 |
| Of the 3,144, those with no county government | 35 |
| Adding Puerto Rico’s 78 municipios and the island areas | 3,235 |
That table contains the whole problem. Two different questions both answer 3,143.
What Connecticut did
Connecticut abolished county government in 1960. The eight counties survived after that as lines on a map, boundaries kept as statistical geography with no county government attached to them. That ended with the 2022 Census vintage: a Federal Register notice of 6 June 2022 retired the eight counties and made nine planning regions the county-equivalent geography for the state.
Fairfield (09001), Hartford (09003), Litchfield (09005), Middlesex (09007), New Haven (09009), New London (09011), Tolland (09013) and Windham (09015) are gone from current files. The nine planning regions carry new codes running from 09110 to 09190, the largest being Capitol Planning Region at 994,115 people and the smallest Northeastern Connecticut Planning Region at 98,096.
The detail that matters for anyone joining data is that the planning regions are groups of towns and are not coterminous with the old counties. No county to planning region crosswalk can be correct; only a town-level one works. 2020 Decennial Census products are still published on the eight legacy counties, so Connecticut decennial figures cannot be attached to planning regions without going back to town level and rebuilding from there. The full account of the Connecticut change sets out what breaks and what still works.
Territories take it to 3,235
Add Puerto Rico’s 78 municipios and the island areas, and the count reaches 3,235. Most national datasets stop at 3,144 because most national programs do, and coverage beyond the fifty states and DC varies from program to program. A table that quietly mixes the two universes will look like it is missing rows when it is not, so say which one you are using before anyone has to guess.
How the wrong number propagates
County FIPS lists are easy to find and easy to parse, and a great many of the ones in circulation are still built on 2020 vintage geography. The 2020 vintage predates the Connecticut change, so it carries the eight retired counties and none of the nine planning regions, and a count taken from it lands on the older total rather than the current one.
Nothing about a 2020 vintage file is wrong in itself. It is a correctly labelled historical vintage, and 2020 vintage geography is exactly what you want when you are working with 2020 Decennial data. The trouble is that a total drawn from it looks right, because it matches the Census phrasing everyone half-remembers. A third-party dataset built that way inherits eight entities that no longer exist, misses nine that do, and reports a plausible number anyway. The error then travels into every product built on that dataset, which is why bad Connecticut geography turns up in tools whose authors never went near Connecticut.
The tell is Connecticut, not the total. If a file contains Hartford County, it is 2020 vintage or older whatever its download date says. Check that before you check the count.
The 3,144 are not spread evenly
Texas has 254 counties, more than any other state, and the next highest is Georgia with 159. Delaware has 3, Hawaii has 5, and the District of Columbia is a single entity. The physical range is wider still. Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area in Alaska covers 145,767.49 square miles of land; Falls Church city, Virginia covers 2.05. Outside Alaska the largest is San Bernardino County, California at 20,068.42 square miles. Population runs from Los Angeles County, California at 9,694,934 down to Loving County, Texas at 52. Those extremes are laid out in the county population rankings and the other ranked tables, all built from the same 3,144 list, so the counts on one page reconcile against the next.
Appearing on the map is also not the same as having a government. Thirty-five of the 3,144 have no county government at all: the nine Connecticut planning regions, the eleven Alaska census areas, all five Rhode Island counties, which lost theirs in 1846, nine of Massachusetts’s fourteen, and Kalawao County, Hawaii, population 82, whose mayor is by law the Director of the Hawaii Department of Health. Twenty-one entities have no county seat at all.
Stating the number properly
Say which universe you mean and give the date. “3,144 counties and county-equivalents in the fifty states and DC, Census Bureau 2025 vintage” cannot be misread. “3,143 counties” will be, and “3,142 counties” is simply out of date.