Anchorage Municipality area

Population and density of Anchorage Municipality

The Census Bureau estimates that 287,155 people lived in Anchorage Municipality on July 1, 2025. That ranks #255 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #1 of 30 in Alaska. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 291,242, the population has declined by 4,087 (−1.4%), compared with +0.5% for Alaska as a whole.

With 1,706.8 square miles of land, that is 168 people per square mile (65 per km²), placing Anchorage Municipality #714 nationally for density and #1 in Alaska. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Alaska median is 0.73. Put another way, there are about 3.8 acres of land per resident.

U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2025 population estimates. Estimates are revised each year and are not decennial census counts. Density divides the whole population by the whole county’s land area, so it describes an average, not how settlement is distributed within the county. Population sources and methods.

Cities and towns in Anchorage Municipality

Every resident of Anchorage Municipality lives within Anchorage municipality. The city and the county equivalent cover the same territory, 1,706.8 square miles of land in the 2026 place Gazetteer, so there are no separate towns or unincorporated areas to list.

Metropolitan area

Anchorage Municipality is a central county of the Anchorage, AK Metropolitan Statistical Area. Its 2 county equivalents have 405,821 residents on 26,409.8 square miles of land; Anchorage Municipality accounts for 6.5% of the land and 70.8% of the residents. By combined land it ranks #2 of 393 metropolitan areas, and #139 by population.

ZIP codes

18 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas have land in Anchorage Municipality; 17 of them have most of their land inside the county, and the others mainly cover neighboring areas.

995019950299503995049950599506995079950899513995159951699517995189953099540995679957799587

ZIP Code Tabulation Areas are the Census Bureau’s approximations of USPS ZIP Code service areas, from the 2020 Census relationship files. Lighter codes have less than half of their land in this county. Post-office-box and single-address ZIP Codes have no tabulation area.

Counties bordering Anchorage Municipality

Anchorage Municipality shares a land border with 3 county equivalents. Each of them has more land than Anchorage Municipality. The largest neighbor is Matanuska-Susitna Borough (24,703 mi²) and the smallest is Chugach Census Area (9,574.5 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Anchorage Municipality forms a block of 52,001.4 mi² of land, of which it holds 3.3%.

How big is Anchorage Municipality compared with U.S. states?

Anchorage Municipality has more land than 1 of the 50 states. It is about 1.7 times the land area of Rhode Island (1,033.9 mi²), while Delaware, the next larger state, has 1.1 times as much land (1,948.6 mi²). Alaska’s county land could hold about 335 areas the size of Anchorage Municipality.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 41.3 miles (66.5 km) on each side. Real county shapes are rarely square, so this is a scale reference rather than a width or driving distance.

State figures are the sums of each state’s county-equivalent land measurements in the same Census release, so states and counties are compared on the same basis. Published state totals can differ slightly because of rounding. Compare all states · Counties bigger than entire states.

What stands out about Anchorage Municipality?

Anchorage Municipality has more land than 2,869 of the other 3,221 county equivalents in the dataset.

A median is the middle county-equivalent measurement, not the average of the largest and smallest. All three bars use the same linear scale. Very small areas may appear as a thin sliver; the labels retain their values.

Does including water change its rank?

Using land plus water places Anchorage Municipality at #328 nationally by total area, 25 places closer to the top than its land rank. The water assigned to this geography moves it ahead of some county equivalents with more land.

Its water share is 12.2%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 11.1 percentage points higher. This describes the statistical geography’s land/water mix, not flood exposure or developable land.

Closest positions in the national land ranking

These entries sit immediately beside Anchorage Municipality in the national ranking. They can be in different states and are not necessarily geographic neighbors.

Calculated from the same Census release as the area table. Total-area order uses original ALAND + AWATER; water shares and chart labels use published square miles. Calculation details.