Map with Counties

Free county choropleth map maker. Paste a CSV of FIPS codes or county names with values, get an instant US choropleth across all 3,132 counties. Customize colors, classification, add a title — all in your browser, no sign-up.

How to make a county map from your data

Five steps from CSV to publication-ready choropleth. Click any sample dataset above to see the whole flow rendered instantly.

1. Bring your data. Paste a CSV with two columns: county FIPS code (or name) and a numeric value. You can paste tab-separated data straight from Excel or Google Sheets, or click any of six built-in sample datasets to try the tool instantly.
2. Match counties to the map. The tool joins your rows to the 3,132 US counties using FIPS codes (preferred — exact match) or fuzzy name matching with state. Unmatched rows are listed so you can fix them.
3. Pick colors and bins. Choose a sequential gradient (green, blue, red, purple, brown) for ordered data or a diverging gradient (red↔blue, purple↔green) when your values span both sides of a midpoint. Pick 3, 5, 7, or 9 bins and a classification method: quantile, equal-interval, or natural breaks.
4. Add a title and label. Type a map title and a value label (e.g. "dollars", "percent", "residents"). These appear on the map legend and on every export, so the map is publication-ready.
5. Export and share. Download as PNG (high-resolution image), SVG (vector graphic for design), or PDF (print-ready, US Letter or A4). Or copy a shareable URL that encodes your data and customizations.

Sample datasets you can try

Six pre-loaded datasets sourced from US Census ACS 5-year estimates and TIGER/Line files. Click any sample on the tool above to render it instantly across all 3,132 counties.

What people use Map with Counties for

Six recurring patterns we see in the analytics. Each one starts with a CSV pulled from a public dataset or a private database export — Map with Counties is the rendering layer between data and a slide deck, blog post, or grant report.

How to make a choropleth map of US counties from CSV

A choropleth map is a thematic map where geographic regions are colored proportional to a statistical variable measured in that region. For US counties, the workflow is the same regardless of your domain: prepare data with a county identifier and a numeric value, join it to a boundary file, classify the values into bins, color by gradient, and add a legend. Map with Counties handles steps 2 through 5 automatically — your job is mainly step 1.

Step 1: Find or build your data

County-level data is more abundant than people realize. The five workhorses are: the US Census Bureau (population, income, race, education, housing — pulled from data.census.gov or the Census API), the Bureau of Labor Statistics (county-level unemployment from the LAUS program, wages from QCEW), the Bureau of Economic Analysis (county GDP, personal income, employment), the MIT Election Lab (presidential and Senate results back to 1976 by county), and the IRS Statistics of Income (county-level adjusted gross income, charitable deductions, migration data). Beyond the federal sources, state agencies publish county-level education, health, and crime data, and commercial sources like Zillow ZHVI and Nielsen DMAs roll up cleanly to county boundaries.

Step 2: Match counties via FIPS or name

FIPS codes are the gold standard for joining data to a county map — they are exact, unambiguous, and stable across decades. A FIPS code is 5 digits: the first 2 are the state (e.g. 06 for California, 48 for Texas) and the last 3 are the county (037 for Los Angeles, 201 for Harris). If your data only has names, append the state abbreviation (e.g. "Cook County, IL") — Map with Counties matches against the lower-cased combined string. Watch out for collisions: 35 states have a "Washington County", 29 have a "Jefferson", 28 have a "Franklin", and Virginia has 38 "independent cities" that act as county-equivalents but are commonly mistyped (Falls Church, Fairfax City, Manassas, etc.).

Step 3: Choose a color scheme

Color choice changes how the same data reads. Three rules: (1) Use a sequential gradient when higher means "more" — population, income, percent of households with broadband. (2) Use a diverging gradient when zero is meaningful — election margin (red↔blue with white at 0% margin), temperature anomaly, year-over-year change. (3) Use a categorical palette when values are discrete groups — that\u2019s where Color a Map shines, not this tool. For accessibility, prefer green or blue sequential gradients (the most colorblind-friendly), and avoid pure red↔green diverging schemes (worst for the most common forms of color vision deficiency).

Step 4: Pick a classification method

Classification is how continuous values get assigned to discrete color bins. Three standard methods cover 95% of cases. Quantile classification puts an equal number of counties in each bin — Map with Counties\u2019 default, ideal for showing the distribution of your data without empty bins. Equal-interval splits the value range into equal-width bins — best when the absolute scale matters (temperature in Fahrenheit, percent unemployment). Natural breaks (Jenks) finds bin boundaries that minimize within-bin variance — best for skewed distributions like population or income, where a few outliers (Los Angeles County, Harris County, Cook County) would dominate equal-interval bins. Bin count: 5 is the safe default; 3 simplifies for executive slides; 7 or 9 reveals texture.

Step 5: Title, legend, and export

A good map title states the variable, the unit, and the time period: "Median household income, US counties, 2022 (US Census ACS 5-year)" beats "Income map." The value label on the legend should be the unit ("dollars", "percent", "residents"). Map with Counties surfaces both fields on every export, so the map is publication-ready straight from your browser.

FIPS codes — the universal county identifier

FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard) codes are the United States\u2019 official identifier system for states, counties, places, and other geographic entities. The Census Bureau and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) jointly maintain the registry. For counties, every code is exactly 5 digits, structured as SSCCC: SS is the state FIPS (01 = Alabama, 02 = Alaska, … 56 = Wyoming, 11 = District of Columbia), and CCC is the county FIPS within that state, padded to three digits. Examples: 06037 = Los Angeles County, CA; 17031 = Cook County, IL; 48201 = Harris County, TX; 36061 = New York County (Manhattan), NY.

Why FIPS over names? Because names collide. There are 35 "Washington" counties, 29 "Jefferson", 28 "Franklin", 27 "Lincoln", and 26 "Madison" — the founding fathers were popular. There are also 41 independent cities in Virginia (plus St. Louis, MO, and Baltimore, MD, and Carson City, NV) that are county-equivalents and use FIPS codes outside the typical state-county pattern. FIPS sidesteps all of this. If you have a column of FIPS codes in your CSV, pasting it into Map with Counties always works.

Common data sources for US county maps

Where to pull county-level data, by domain. All of the following are free and most are directly downloadable as CSV with a FIPS column.

How many counties does each US state have?

Need a county map of a single state? Below is the count of counties per state, plus a link to the printable blank state map with counties for each. The full national choropleth above already covers every county — just include only one state\u2019s data in your CSV and the rest will render as unfilled.

Texas leads with 254 counties — more than the next four states combined (NV, AZ, AK, HI). Delaware has only 3 counties, the fewest. Connecticut and Rhode Island have abolished county government, but the boundaries remain on Census maps and FIPS codes are still assigned.

Map with Counties vs other tools

Honest comparison against the alternatives. Each tool wins different scenarios — the table is a feature checklist, not a value judgement.

Datawrapper is excellent if you want sophisticated annotation and a ready-made embed for a news site — that\u2019s its design space. Tableau Public is the right call if your audience interacts with the map itself (filtering, tooltips with multiple variables, dashboarding). Excel and Google Sheets work if you only need a state-level map (both have built-in filled-region maps, but neither does counties cleanly without a plugin). Map with Counties is the fastest path from a CSV in your clipboard to a county-level choropleth, with no account, no embed, and no learning curve.

Related tools and resources

Map with Counties pairs naturally with several other SimpleMapLab tools. If your data is categorical rather than numeric — countries you have visited, US states you have lived in — try Color a Map, which lets you click any region and assign it to a custom-labelled color group. If you want to explore Census-derived county metrics rather than load your own data, the Interactive US County Map renders the same 3,132 counties choropleth-styled by population, income, age, education, and poverty — built-in metrics, no upload needed.

For a single-county deep dive (cities inside the county, demographics, neighbours) use the County Map with Cities. To find the county that contains an address, use Address to County Lookup. To get the county for a coordinate or a "current location", use What County Am I In?. And for printable blank state maps with county outlines (PNG / SVG / PDF), browse our 110 free printable blank maps.

Frequently asked questions

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