Macrotrends?

Submitted by FreeStater on April 22, 2026

Can anybody vouch for the accuracy of macrotrends' historical city population data? Note that it's based on urban area population.

It's one of the few resources available for historical city populations, and its recent estimates more or less line up with what citypopulation.de reports, but if they have sources, they're not telling.

If it's not reliable, does anyone know any better historical city population data resources?

2 Comments

Level ∞

Apr 22, 2026

In the page you linked, it appears to use straight-line interpolation between census years. Not the best method but it's a decent first approximation. But there is no special sauce sauce there as far as I can tell.

It seems to differ slightly from this page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area

Probably because the MSA boundaries have shifted over time.

Level 81

Apr 22, 2026

I figured it was something like that. In the absence of better sources, I'm going to draw that it's probably okay to use.

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