Top 100 Best Places to Live in the US in 2025

At Livability, we’re experts on what makes cities great places to live. For more than a decade, we’ve been curating our annual list of the Best Places To Live in the U.S., helping you discover the most livable cities in America.

Maybe a better quality of life is waiting for you somewhere you haven’t considered — a place where you’re not just a number. If you’re looking for your personal best place to live, we know what might be on your wishlist. You want to have it all. A shot at owning a home. Less time sitting in traffic. A safe and vibrant place where you can truly thrive. 

We’ve examined all this and more to bring you our Best Places list packed with helpful information about living in each of our Top 100 cities, to help you find your perfect place to live.

How we choose the Top 100 best cities

Livability commissions data on thousands of U.S. cities. And then we sort through that data so you don’t have to. We partnered with Applied Geographic Solutions (AGS) to curate our Top 100 Best Places To Live in the U.S. based on nearly 100 data points and an algorithm that takes into account measures of a city’s economy, housing and cost of living, amenities, transportation, environment, safety, education and health. Check out our Best Places Methodology to learn more about our process for choosing the Top 100 cities. 

Size and affordability set Livability’s Best Places list apart

There are lots of best places lists out there, but ours is unique for several reasons.

First, we only consider small to mid-size cities with populations between 75,000 and 500,000. To us, that’s the sweet spot in size for getting plugged in, finding your people and feeling at home fast.

Second, we believe that affordability is one of the biggest benefits of living in a smaller city. With that sentiment in mind, we only consider cities with a median home value of $500,000 or less. We also analyze average rent and home prices relative to income in each city, as well as other factors that influence the cost of living. Ours is the only list truly centered around affordability. 

Our cities may be smaller, but what you can accomplish in them is BIG. 

Third, our Top 100 cities are not ranked from 1 to 100. Since there’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to the perfect place to live, we’ve created a  list that is  fully interactive, with tools to sort and filter according to the criteria that are most important to you. 

To see the unfiltered list in its entirety, just keep scrolling down the page. Or, experiment with the sorting and filtering features to curate your own personalized Best Places To Live list!

So whether you’re looking for a fresh start, want to get closer to your family or hope to take the next step in your career, the cities on our list are ready to welcome you. Now, let’s find your best place to live!