How CountyScore Works: Our Methodology

Our Mission

CountyScore is the flagship product of the ByCounty Network — a platform that turns fragmented government data into a clear, comparable county report card. Every year, millions of Americans research counties for moves, home purchases, and retirement planning. That research typically means visiting a dozen disconnected government websites and trying to piece together a picture from raw data.

CountyScore solves this by combining data from seven federal agencies into a single composite score (0–100) for every one of the 3,100+ counties in the United States. A higher score means a county performs better, on average, across the dimensions we measure. All data comes from free, public government sources — no proprietary data, no paywalls.

The 9 Scoring Dimensions

Each county is evaluated across nine independent dimensions. Every dimension is scored on a 0–100 scale using percentile-rank normalization (see “Scoring Methodology” below). The dimensions are:

Data Sources

All data used by CountyScore comes from U.S. federal government sources and is freely available to the public. We do not use proprietary or paywalled datasets.

Scoring Methodology

Step 1: Collect raw values

For each of the nine dimensions, we pull the relevant raw metric for every county where data is available. For example, the Safety dimension uses total crime rate per 100,000 residents from FBI UCR data.

Step 2: Percentile-rank normalization

Raw values vary wildly across dimensions — crime rates are measured per 100K residents, income in dollars, tax rates as percentages. To make them comparable, we convert every raw value into a percentile rank across all counties with available data for that dimension.

Importantly, the direction is always adjusted so that a higher score is always better:

• For metrics where lower is better (crime rate, tax rate, health violations), we rank counties from worst to best — so a county with the lowest crime rate gets a score of 100.
• For metrics where higher is better (median income, graduation rate, life expectancy), we rank counties from best to worst — so a county with the highest income gets a score of 100.

This means a score of 75 on any dimension means the county performs in the top 25% of all U.S. counties on that metric.

Step 3: Composite score

The composite County Score is a weighted average of all available dimension scores. By default, all nine dimensions are weighted equally. When a dimension has no data for a county (see “Data Quality” below), it is excluded from that county’s composite calculation and the remaining dimensions are re-weighted proportionally.

User-configurable weighting

On our Find Your Ideal County quiz, users can adjust the relative weights of each dimension to reflect their personal priorities — for example, weighting Schools and Safety more heavily for families, or Property Taxes and Cost of Living more heavily for retirees on fixed incomes. Quiz-adjusted scores are calculated in real time in the browser and are not stored.

Data Quality

Missing data

Not all data sources cover every county. The Census Bureau suppresses data for counties where sample sizes are too small to produce reliable estimates. FBI UCR coverage depends on voluntary reporting by local law enforcement agencies. NOAA coverage depends on weather station proximity. When data is unavailable or suppressed, we display “N/A” rather than showing potentially misleading numbers. Missing dimensions are excluded from the composite score calculation.

Outlier handling

Our data pipeline automatically converts Census Bureau sentinel values (e.g., -666666666) to null, validates that derived rates fall within plausible ranges, and cross-checks county FIPS codes against the Census geographic hierarchy. Extreme outliers are flagged for manual review before publication.

Update frequency

We update data as new releases become available from each federal source. Census ACS 5-year estimates are typically released in December each year. FEMA NRI, CDC County Health Rankings, and NOAA Normals each publish on their own schedules. All 3,100+ counties are re-scored simultaneously when any data source is updated to ensure consistency across the dataset.

The current data vintage for each source is noted in the Data Sources table above. Individual county pages display the data year alongside each metric.

Accuracy disclaimer

County scores and rankings are derived from government survey data and carry inherent uncertainty. Census ACS estimates include margins of error. Crime reporting completeness varies by agency. All data on CountyScore is informational only and should not be the sole basis for relocation, financial, legal, or investment decisions.

AI-Generated Summaries

To make data more accessible and readable, CountyScore uses the Claude AI API to generate prose descriptions of county-level statistics. For example, a passage like “Harris County ranks in the top 15% of Texas counties for median household income” is produced automatically by passing structured data to the Claude API and generating human-readable text.

All AI-generated narrative content on this site:

• Is grounded in publicly available U.S. government data (Census ACS, FBI UCR, CDC, FEMA, NCES, EPA, NOAA)
• Does not include editorial opinions, recommendations, or predictions beyond what the data supports
• May contain errors or outdated information — always verify important decisions against primary sources
• Is reviewed periodically as data sources are updated

The underlying scores, rankings, and raw data figures on every county page are calculated deterministically from government data — not generated by AI. AI is used only to produce the explanatory prose that surrounds those numbers.

Editorial Independence

CountyScore is part of the ByCounty Network, which is supported by display advertising and affiliate partnerships. We may earn commissions when users click through to affiliated services such as mortgage lenders, property tax appeal services, moving companies, and home insurance providers.

These commercial relationships have no influence on county scores, rankings, or data presentation. All scores are derived algorithmically from government data using the methodology described above. No county, advertiser, or third party has ever paid to improve, suppress, or alter a county’s score or ranking on CountyScore.

Affiliate relationships are clearly disclosed on every page where they appear. If you believe any data on CountyScore is incorrect, please contact us. We take data accuracy seriously and investigate all reports.

Questions or Corrections

If you have questions about our methodology, believe a score is inaccurate, or want to suggest a new data dimension, please contact us or email hello@bycounty.com. We are committed to transparency and welcome scrutiny of our methods.