City rankings

Largest Cities in Georgia

Atlanta ranks #1 in Georgia for largest cities at 505,268.

This ranking orders all 50 qualifying Georgia cities by population, computed from the named federal field or time-series described below. It is one of 9 transparent ranking lenses Areazine publishes for Georgia, each answering one direct question from official data. Compare Atlanta's standing against every other Georgia city ranked below.

Data updated 2026-08-21

50
Cities ranked
505,268
#1 Atlanta
22,473
Lowest, Acworth

What this Georgia ranking shows

According to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates, the CDC PLACES population-level health analysis, and the CMS Hospital Compare quality data, Areazine ranks U.S. cities across more than 19,000 incorporated places, census-designated places, and consolidated city-county governments. State-level city rankings combine these federal datasets to produce intra-state comparisons across demographics, economics, health outcomes, and hospital quality.

Atlanta leads 50 Georgia cities at 505,268, while Acworth sits at the bottom with 22,473 - a total spread of 482,795 on population. The top 5 occupy 82% of that range, indicating a wide separation between leaders and the rest of the field.

The median Georgia city in this list sits at 37,381, 467,887 behind Atlanta. See our methodology for ranking construction, data vintage, refresh cadence, and the federal upstream tables we join, and triangulate via the 8 other Georgia rankings below, cities that lead on multiple lenses are the most robust signals.

Top 5 - Largest Cities

Top 5 Georgia cities ranked by population
Rank City population Population
#1 Atlanta 505,268 511K
#2 Columbus 203,711 207K
#3 Savannah 147,898 148K
#4 South Fulton 110,471 107K
#5 Sandy Springs 107,087 105K

Does population track with city size?

Largest Cities vs. population, top 25 ranked cities

Source: U.S. Census Bureau (population), population per methodology 2×2 strategic matrix plotting 25 entities by Population (X) and population (Y), with a crosshair dividing the plot into four quadrants. Large & strongSmall & strongLarge & weakSmall & weak 0200,000400,000600,000 0200,000400,000600,000 Population population
Source: U.S. Census Bureau (population), population per methodology

Largest Cities 50

More Georgia Rankings 8

Reading this Georgia ranking responsibly

Single-metric rankings are useful precisely because they are honest about what they measure. A "highest income" ranking does not tell you that the top-ranked city is the best place to live in Georgia; it tells you that, among cities of population ten thousand and above in Georgia that have a published median household income field in the most recent American Community Survey five-year estimates, this city has the highest such value. That precise definition matters, because composite "best places" lists from real-estate marketing sites and lifestyle magazines often combine income with subjective weights on schools, walkability, and amenities, producing a score whose components are not disclosed and whose ordering is not reproducible. Areazine's editorial commitment is to keep the underlying field, source, and vintage visible so the reader can audit any rank in this list against the canonical federal record.

Cross-checking against other rankings is a useful sanity test. A city that appears in the top ten on three or more different rankings, for example, highest income, most educated, and lowest poverty, is showing a robust signal across multiple independent dimensions. A city that appears in the top ten on only one ranking and middling on the others is showing a narrower signal, often driven by a single statistical artifact (a small population pulling the per-capita measure, a recent acquisition spike inflating median home value, an outlier survey year). The other nine Georgia rankings linked above provide that cross-check at zero extra effort.

Data Sources

Population and economic data from the Census Bureau American Community Survey (2024 5-year estimates). Health data from the CDC PLACES (2023). Ranking computations use U.S. Census Bureau reference geographies. Crime statistics, where referenced, originate from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting program (also accessible via the Crime Data Explorer).