Massachusetts Counties
Complete list of all 14 counties in Massachusetts with population, area, median income, and county seats — plus a free printable blank map.
Labeled outline map of Massachusetts counties. Download a printable version in SVG, PNG, or PDF.
All 14 Massachusetts counties
| County | County Seat | Population ▼ | Area | Median Income | Cities |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Middlesex | — | 1,629,277 | 818 mi² | $139,101 | 76 |
| Worcester | — | 867,539 | 1,511 mi² | $101,626 | 83 |
| Essex | — | 812,999 | 493 mi² | $109,263 | 39 |
| Suffolk | — | 780,506 | 58 mi² | $96,137 | 19 |
| Norfolk | — | 743,687 | 396 mi² | $143,162 | 41 |
| Bristol | — | 582,221 | 553 mi² | $91,092 | 31 |
| Plymouth | — | 532,979 | 659 mi² | $119,139 | 47 |
| Hampden | — | 462,835 | 617 mi² | $73,826 | 27 |
| Barnstable | — | 233,025 | 394 mi² | $99,275 | 51 |
| Hampshire | — | 163,328 | 527 mi² | $88,500 | 25 |
| Berkshire | — | 129,291 | 927 mi² | $79,793 | 34 |
| Franklin | — | 70,136 | 699 mi² | $74,936 | 29 |
| Dukes | — | 21,672 | 103 mi² | $128,294 | 8 |
| Nantucket | — | 14,483 | 45 mi² | $140,938 | 2 |
How many counties does Massachusetts have?
Massachusetts has fourteen counties, but eight of them have no functioning county government — those counties were dissolved between 1997 and 2000, with their functions absorbed by the state. The remaining six retain limited county-level operations.
The largest county by land area is Worcester County at 1,511 square miles, home to about 867,539 residents. The most populous is Middlesex County with approximately 1,629,277 residents — a density of about 1,992 people per square mile.
At the other end of the scale, Nantucket County has only about 14,483 residents.
Boston is both the state capital and the largest city in Massachusetts.
Related resources
Download a printable outline of Massachusetts’s county boundaries from our blank map of Massachusetts page — available in SVG, PNG, and PDF.
Use the What County Am I In? tool to detect which Massachusetts county a GPS location or address falls in, or the Address to County Lookup for batch input.
For demographic radius analysis, the Find ZIP Codes in Radius and Population Within Radius tools let you draw a circle around any Massachusetts address and see every ZIP code and the total population inside.
Two SimpleMapLab studies cover Massachusetts specifically: the 100-mile radius around Boston measures how much of the state lives within 100 miles of its capitol, and the loneliest town in Massachusetts ranks the state’s most isolated inhabited place. The county-counts blog post puts Massachusetts’s 14 counties in national context.
Frequently asked questions
Population and demographics are aggregated from ZIP-code-level US Census data via the SimpleMaps dataset. Countiesboundaries are from the US Atlas TopoJSON build of the Census Bureau’s TIGER/Line shapefiles. Land area is from the Census Gazetteer. State counts follow the US Census Bureau’s definition of counties and county-equivalents (50 states + DC = 3,143). All sources are public domain.