Kent County area

Population and density of Kent County

The Census Bureau estimates that 194,786 people lived in Kent County on July 1, 2025. That ranks #367 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #3 of 3 in Delaware. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 181,849, the population has grown by 12,937 (+7.1%), compared with +7.1% for Delaware as a whole.

With 586.1 square miles of land, that is 332 people per square mile (128 per km²), placing Kent County #468 nationally for density and #2 in Delaware. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Delaware median is 332. Put another way, there are about 1.9 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 Kent County

20 incorporated places lie at least partly in Kent County. Together they are home to 82,286 people (42.2%); the other 112,500 (57.8%) live outside any incorporated place, in unincorporated communities and rural areas.

The largest is Dover city, with 40,592 residents in the county. Among places with at least 1,000 residents in 2020, Milford city grew fastest since then (+58.3%).

Population: U.S. Census Bureau Vintage 2025 subcounty estimates, counting only the part of each place inside Kent County. Land: 2026 Census Gazetteer, for the whole place even where it extends into other counties. How communities are listed.

Metropolitan area

Kent County is a central county of the Dover, DE Metropolitan Statistical Area. Kent County is the area’s only county equivalent, so the metro area has the same 586.1 square miles of land. By combined land it ranks #341 of 393 metropolitan areas, and #241 by population. It belongs to the Philadelphia-Reading-Camden, PA-NJ-DE-MD Combined Statistical Area.

ZIP codes

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

19901199021990419934199361993819943199461995019952199531995419955199621996319964199771997919980

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 Kent County

Kent County shares a land border with 5 county equivalents, including 3 in Maryland. It has more land than 4 of them. The largest neighbor is Sussex County (936.2 mi²) and the smallest is Kent County (276.9 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Kent County forms a block of 2,916.6 mi² of land, of which it holds 20.1%.

How big is Kent County compared with U.S. states?

Kent County has less land than any of the 50 states. Rhode Island, the smallest state by land area, has 1,033.9 mi², about 1.8 times as much. Delaware’s county land could hold about 3.3 areas the size of Kent County.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 24.2 miles (39 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 Kent County?

Kent County has more land than 1,544 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 Kent County at #1,188 nationally by total area, 490 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 26.6%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 25.4 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 Kent County 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.