Will County area

Population and density of Will County

The Census Bureau estimates that 712,253 people lived in Will County on July 1, 2025. That ranks #99 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #4 of 102 in Illinois. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 697,361, the population has grown by 14,892 (+2.1%), compared with −0.8% for Illinois as a whole.

With 835.9 square miles of land, that is 852 people per square mile (329 per km²), placing Will County #217 nationally for density and #5 in Illinois. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Illinois median is 44. Put another way, there are about 0.751 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 Will County

37 incorporated places lie at least partly in Will County. Together they are home to 610,757 people (85.8%); the other 101,496 (14.2%) live outside any incorporated place, in unincorporated communities and rural areas.

The largest is Joliet city, with 137,691 residents in the county (the city extends into 1 other county). Among places with at least 1,000 residents in 2020, Manhattan village grew fastest since then (+16.6%).

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

Metropolitan area

Will County is a central county of the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN Metropolitan Statistical Area, in the Chicago-Naperville-Schaumburg, IL metropolitan division. Its 13 county equivalents have 9,434,123 residents on 6,923.3 square miles of land; Will County accounts for 12.1% of the land and 7.5% of the residents. By combined land it ranks #27 of 393 metropolitan areas, and #3 by population. It belongs to the Chicago-Naperville, IL-IN-WI Combined Statistical Area.

ZIP codes

45 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas have land in Will County; 30 of them have most of their land inside the county, and the others mainly cover neighboring areas.

604016040360404604076040860410604166041760421604236043160432604336043560436604396044060441604426044660447604486044960451604666046760468604716047560477604816048460487604906049160503605176054360544605646056560585605866094060950

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 Will County

Will County shares a land border with 6 county equivalents, including 1 in Indiana. It has more land than 5 of them. The largest neighbor is Cook County (944.9 mi²) and the smallest is Kendall County (320.2 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Will County forms a block of 4,022.5 mi² of land, of which it holds 20.8%.

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

Will County has less land than any of the 50 states. Rhode Island, the smallest state by land area, has 1,033.9 mi², about 1.2 times as much. Illinois’s county land could hold about 66 areas the size of Will County.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 28.9 miles (46.5 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 Will County?

Will County has more land than 2,218 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 Will County at #1,087 nationally by total area, 83 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 1.6%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 0.4 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 Will 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.