Best Counties to Live in America — 2026 Rankings

Based on CountyScore's weighted baseline ranking across nine dimensions — property tax, cost of living, safety, health, schools, income, disaster risk, water quality, and weather — Billings County, ND currently holds the #1 spot with a score of 84.6/100.

CountyScore assigns each of the 3,144 US counties a 0–100 percentile rank on nine baseline dimensions sourced from U.S. government data: Census ACS (tax, cost, income), FBI UCR (safety), CDC (health), NCES (schools), FEMA National Risk Index (disaster risk), EPA SDWIS (water quality), and NOAA (weather). The composite score is a weighted average of those nine baseline dimension scores, with missing dimensions excluded and the remaining weights renormalized.

The national average composite score is 50/100. The distribution is highly concentrated — only 67 counties score above 70, meaning a score of 70+ puts a county in the top 2% nationally.

States with the most high-scoring counties tend to be in the Northern Plains (North Dakota, Nebraska, Montana) and parts of the Mountain West, where low property taxes, low crime, strong water quality, and low disaster risk combine favorably. Click any state below to see its full county rankings.

Property tax rates vary widely by county. CountyScore tracks effective property tax rates from Census ACS data for all 3,144 counties. Visit TaxByCounty.com or filter by the Tax dimension in any state ranking page to find the lowest-tax counties in your target state.

CountyScore rankings are updated whenever new U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-year estimates are released (typically annually). The current dataset uses 2019–2023 ACS estimates combined with the most recent available FBI, CDC, FEMA, NCES, and EPA releases.