Denton County area

Population and density of Denton County

The Census Bureau estimates that 1,069,346 people lived in Denton County on July 1, 2025. That ranks #46 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #7 of 254 in Texas. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 906,530, the population has grown by 162,816 (+18%), compared with +8.8% for Texas as a whole.

With 878.1 square miles of land, that is 1,218 people per square mile (470 per km²), placing Denton County #146 nationally for density and #7 in Texas. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Texas median is 22. Put another way, there are about 0.526 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 Denton County

45 incorporated places lie at least partly in Denton County. Together they are home to 927,289 people (86.7%); the other 142,057 (13.3%) live outside any incorporated place, in unincorporated communities and rural areas.

The largest is Denton city, with 169,431 residents in the county. By land, Fort Worth city is the largest at 354.4 mi² across all its counties. Among places with at least 1,000 residents in 2020, Celina city grew fastest since then (+278.1%).

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

Metropolitan area

Denton County is an outlying county of the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX Metropolitan Statistical Area, in the Dallas-Plano-Irving, TX metropolitan division. Its 11 county equivalents have 8,477,157 residents on 8,675.6 square miles of land; Denton County accounts for 10.1% of the land and 12.6% of the residents. By combined land it ranks #11 of 393 metropolitan areas, and #4 by population. It belongs to the Dallas-Fort Worth, TX-OK Combined Statistical Area.

ZIP codes

40 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas have land in Denton County; 27 of them have most of their land inside the county, and the others mainly cover neighboring areas.

75007750097501075019750227502475028750337503475036750567505775065750677506875077750787509375287760527607876092761777620176203762057620776208762097621076226762277623476247762497625876259762627626676272

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 Denton County

Denton County shares a land border with 6 county equivalents. It has more land than 4 of them. The largest neighbor is Grayson County (932.8 mi²) and the smallest is Collin County (841.6 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Denton County forms a block of 6,170.3 mi² of land, of which it holds 14.2%.

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

Denton 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. Texas’s county land could hold about 298 areas the size of Denton County.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 29.6 miles (47.7 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 Denton County?

Denton County has more land than 2,309 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 Denton County at #844 nationally by total area, 69 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 7.7%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 6.6 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 Denton 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.