Grady County area

Population and density of Grady County

The Census Bureau estimates that 26,590 people lived in Grady County on July 1, 2025. That ranks #1,599 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #75 of 159 in Georgia. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 26,234, the population has grown by 356 (+1.4%), compared with +5.5% for Georgia as a whole.

With 454.5 square miles of land, that is 59 people per square mile (23 per km²), placing Grady County #1,408 nationally for density and #89 in Georgia. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Georgia median is 69. Put another way, there are about 11 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 Grady County

2 incorporated places lie at least partly in Grady County. Together they are home to 10,563 people (39.7%); the other 16,027 (60.3%) live outside any incorporated place, in unincorporated communities and rural areas.

The largest is Cairo city, with 10,150 residents in the county.

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

Metropolitan area

Grady County is an outlying county of the Thomasville, GA Micropolitan Statistical Area. Its 2 county equivalents have 72,958 residents on 999.1 square miles of land; Grady County accounts for 45.5% of the land and 36.4% of the residents. By combined land it ranks #182 of 542 micropolitan areas, and #96 by population.

ZIP codes

6 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas have land in Grady County; 3 of them have most of their land inside the county, and the others mainly cover neighboring areas.

317733177931792398273982839897

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 Grady County

Grady County shares a land border with 5 county equivalents, including 2 in Florida. Each of them has more land than Grady County. The largest neighbor is Leon County (668.4 mi²) and the smallest is Mitchell County (512.2 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Grady County forms a block of 3,293.3 mi² of land, of which it holds 13.8%.

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

Grady County has less land than any of the 50 states. Rhode Island, the smallest state by land area, has 1,033.9 mi², about 2.3 times as much. Georgia’s county land could hold about 127 areas the size of Grady County.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 21.3 miles (34.3 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 Grady County?

Grady County has more land than 969 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 Grady County at #2,314 nationally by total area, 61 places farther from the top than its land rank. Other county equivalents gain more area when their water measurements are included.

Its water share is 1.3%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2%. The two percentages are within 0.1 percentage points of each other. 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 Grady 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.