CountyAtlas

What County Am I In?

Find your U.S. county from your location, a street address, a city, or a ZIP. The match uses official U.S. Census boundaries and comes back with the county’s population, income, and county-seat data. U.S. counties only.

  • Your location
  • Street address
  • City or place
  • ZIP code

Or enter a city and state, a full street address, or a ZIP:

Sample result: what you’ll see

You are in Los Angeles County, California.

FIPS / GEOID
06037
County seat
Los Angeles
Population
9,694,934
Median household income
$90,757
Unemployment
4.5% (September 2026, preliminary)
Population density
2,388 /sq mi
Land area
4,060 sq mi
County center
34.196, -118.262

Sources: Census TIGER 2026 · Census PEP V2025 · Census SAIPE 2024 · BLS LAUS September 2026, preliminary · Wikidata P36 (Nov 2026)

See all California counties →

The official boundaries, kept current by the governments that draw them

Your county is resolved against the U.S. Census Bureau’s TIGER/Line boundaries, the official federal representation of U.S. county lines. Those boundaries are kept current through the Census Bureau’s annual Boundary and Annexation Survey, in which state and local governments report every legally enacted boundary change, each backed by an ordinance or state action and an effective date.

OpenStreetMap is a different kind of source: a map built and maintained by volunteer contributors, searched through its Nominatim geocoder. Both can be accurate; the difference is provenance. When the answer decides your taxes, your ballot, or which court hears your case, we use the government’s own boundary source. (The lines themselves are set by state law; the Census Bureau’s job is to record them faithfully and keep the map current, which makes it the right source to match against.)

How it works

  1. Share your location, or type an address, city, or ZIP. Tap “Use my location” and allow the browser’s prompt, or enter a full street address, a city and state, or a ZIP code.
  2. Your location is geocoded by the Census Bureau. Your coordinates (or the address you typed) are sent to the U.S. Census Bureau’s own geocoder, which runs on official Census TIGER geographies.
  3. Your point is tested against the county boundary. The geocoder runs a point-in-polygon test against the Census TIGER/Line county boundaries and finds the one county whose boundary contains your point.
  4. You get your county and its data. Your county appears with its FIPS code, population, median income, unemployment, county seat, and density, plus a link to every county in your state.

How accurate is it? Your county is whichever boundary contains your point, so the result is only as precise as that point. The FAQ below covers what to expect from GPS versus a typed address. Standing right on a county line, a full street address is the surest input. Rather than quote an accuracy percentage, we test your point directly against the official Census boundary.

Why your county matters

Your county is a unit of government that runs a specific set of services, and which county you’re in decides which ones apply to you. County structure varies (New England towns, Virginia’s independent cities, and consolidated city-counties like San Francisco or Denver run many of these themselves), but across most of the country these 8 are county jobs:

Elections & voter registration

Your county registers voters and runs elections. A county clerk, auditor, recorder, registrar, or board of elections keeps the voter rolls, prints and mails ballots, staffs the polling places, and certifies the local count. Counties run elections in most states; New England towns and some cities do it themselves.

Property taxes

A county assessor appraises every parcel to set its taxable value; a county treasurer or tax collector then applies the combined rates, mails the bill, and collects. Get the county wrong and you’re looking at the wrong assessor and the wrong board to appeal to. (Texas splits valuation into a separate appraisal district; New England towns assess their own.)

Deeds & property records

The county recorder or register of deeds is the legal custodian of land records: every deed, mortgage, lien, and easement is filed and indexed there, and recording a document is what gives it public notice and legal priority. A title search runs through that county’s grantor–grantee index.

Courts & jury duty

Trial courts are organized by county. The county clerk of court holds the case files and dockets and administers jury service, drawing jurors at random, usually from that county’s registered voters and licensed drivers. (Judges themselves are usually state officers, and a few states fully unify and fund their courts.)

911, the sheriff & emergency services

Outside city limits, the elected county sheriff is the primary law enforcement, runs the county jail, and serves court process; a county 911 center often dispatches police, fire, and EMS across the whole county. Which county you’re in decides who answers and who responds. (Cities run their own police; fire and EMS are frequently municipal or special-district.)

Schools & zoning

In Maryland and much of the South, school-district lines are the county line and a county board of education runs the schools; elsewhere, independent school districts do. For land outside any city, the county’s zoning ordinance and planning department decide what you can build and issue the permit.

Business licensing & permits

Run a business in the unincorporated part of a county and the county issues your general business license and your building, grading, and health permits. The rule of thumb: inside a city you license with the city; outside one, with the county. (Many professional and alcohol licenses are state-issued.)

Vital records: marriage, birth, death

In most states you get a marriage license from a county office, usually the clerk; New England towns issue their own. Births and deaths are registered locally, but the authoritative custodian is usually the state health department, though many county offices issue certified copies of events that happened there.

Your ZIP code may cross county lines

A ZIP code is a set of USPS delivery routes, not a county. In the HUD–USPS crosswalk, 11,379 of 39,484 ZIP codes (28.8%) fall in more than one county calculated from HUD-USPS 2026 Q2. So the county printed on your mail may not be the county you’re standing in. That’s why this tool tests your location against the boundary rather than guessing from your ZIP. To see every county a specific ZIP touches, with each county’s share of that ZIP’s addresses, use the ZIP-to-county lookup.

Common questions

What county am I in right now?

Tap Use my location above and allow your browser’s location prompt. Your county appears instantly, matched against the official Census boundary. No location access? Type your street address, city, or ZIP code instead.

How accurate is the location match?

As exact as your position. A phone’s GPS is typically accurate to about 4.9 m (16 ft) under open sky (GPS.gov); indoors or in a city, browsers fall back to Wi-Fi or IP location, which can be off by hundreds of meters. Within a few meters of a county line, a full street address is more reliable than GPS.

Can I find my county from just my ZIP code?

Often, but not always: 28.8% of U.S. ZIP codes (11,379 of 39,484) fall in more than one county, per the HUD–USPS crosswalk (2026 Q2). For a single, certain answer, use your location or a full street address. To see every county a ZIP touches, use the ZIP-to-county lookup.

Can I look up my county by street address?

Yes. Type a full street address and it’s geocoded and point-in-polygon-tested against the Census TIGER county boundaries. It is the most precise text option, and the right one when the answer matters.

Can I use latitude/longitude coordinates?

Yes. “Use my location” sends your device’s coordinates, and you can type or paste a latitude and longitude into the box as well, such as 34.05, -118.25. The point is tested against the county boundary the same way.

Why is my county different from my city?

A city sits inside a county (occasionally two), and one county holds many cities plus unincorporated land that belongs to no city at all. Your city and your county are different layers of government; this tool answers the county.

Does this store my location?

Only your last lookup, and only in your browser: the point it looked up, or the address or place you typed, so the tool can offer it when you come back. Clear removes it. Every lookup, GPS included, goes through our server to the U.S. Census Bureau’s geocoder, which finds the county. A point travels inside the request, not in its web address, so it stays out of our server’s logs and caches, and the server keeps nothing. There is no account, we build no profile, and your location is not sold or shared. See our privacy policy.

Why does my GPS county differ from my mailing address?

USPS assigns ZIP codes and “preferred” city names for delivery convenience, and postal boundaries cross county lines freely. Your GPS point, tested against the actual boundary, reflects the county you’re physically in, and that is what jurisdiction follows.

Why won’t location work in Chrome on my iPhone?

On iPhone, third-party browsers and the in-app browser inside apps like Facebook or Instagram can be blocked from precise location, or return only an approximate fix. Enter your address or ZIP instead to get the same official answer.

What is a FIPS code?

A county’s FIPS (or GEOID) is a five-digit federal ID: two digits for the state, three for the county. For example, 39035 is Cuyahoga County, Ohio. (The FIPS 6-4 standard was withdrawn in 2008; the Census Bureau now assigns county codes under INCITS 31:2009.) Your county’s code is shown with its data above.

What about parishes, boroughs, and independent cities?

They’re county-equivalents, and this tool handles them: Louisiana has parishes, Alaska has boroughs and census areas, and Virginia has independent cities that sit outside any county. Each has its own FIPS code and appears just like a county.

Is it free?

Yes. There’s no signup and no limit. It’s part of CountyAtlas, a data reference for all 3,144 U.S. counties and county-equivalents.

Sources

By , BSc Physics, University of Ljubljana · How this site is made

Related location tools