Rankings
Best Cities to Live in America 2026 (Federal Data Ranked)
The top 25 US cities ranked by composite MoveScore across six federal data streams — crime, water, air, schools, fiscal health, and hospitals.
Read article →Updated June 2026 · Six federal data streams
Blog
Data-driven analysis of where to live in America. Relocation guides, livability rankings, and how to read the federal numbers behind every move — with every figure traceable to FBI, EPA, NCES, Census, or CMS source records.
Why Federal Data, Not Vibes
"Best places to live" lists usually rank cities on resident polls, marketing pitches, or opaque proprietary scores. Those rankings tell you which cities have the best PR — not which cities have the cleanest water, the lowest violent crime, the best-funded schools, or the highest-rated hospitals. MoveScore takes the opposite approach: it pulls only from public federal datasets that are reported by the city or measured by a federal agency, and it cites the source for every sub-score on every page.
The six streams behind every MoveScore are FBI Uniform Crime Reporting for crime, EPA SDWIS for water, EPA AQS for air, NCES Common Core of Data for schools, Census ASPEP for fiscal health, and CMS Care Compare for hospitals. Migration patterns and cost-of-living context come from the Census Bureau migration program and BLS CPI.
How These Articles Are Written
Every post starts from the underlying federal CSV or API. We compute the rankings from raw data, write the analysis around what the data shows, and publish a dated article that links every claim back to a city page. When new federal releases shift a ranking, we update the post and note the change at the top — we do not silently re-date old content.
Articles are honest about trade-offs. A city in the top tier for crime can be in the bottom tier for fiscal health; a city with great schools can have a struggling hospital system. We name those trade-offs explicitly, because relocation is a decision under constraints, not a search for a perfect city.
What You Will Find Below
The reading list below covers the relocation questions readers ask most: which cities rank highest on the composite, how to weigh schools versus safety versus air, where the cleanest air actually is, what "safest cities" means when you read it from FBI data, and how the MoveScore formula itself is built. Browse the latest articles or jump to a city page from the homepage to see local livability data first.
Guide
How to Choose a City to Move To: A Data-First Guide
Seven federal data signals that actually predict quality of life, and the three questions every relocator should answer before the lease.
Read article →Data
Cities with the Cleanest Air in America
EPA Air Quality System data from every monitored US metro, ranked by median AQI and unhealthy-day counts over five years.
Read article →Rankings
The Safest Cities in America, by FBI Crime Data
Violent and property crime rates per 100,000 residents, pulled straight from FBI Uniform Crime Reporting — not from opinion surveys.
Read article →Analysis
Best Cities for Families: Where Schools and Safety Both Deliver
Most "family-friendly" lists cherry-pick one metric. These cities score in the top tier on both school performance and FBI-reported safety.
Read article →Guide
What Is a Livability Score? How MoveScore Works
An honest, source-by-source walkthrough of the six federal data streams behind every MoveScore, what each measures, and what it misses.
Read article →Frequently Asked Questions
What is a MoveScore?
A MoveScore is a 0-100 composite livability grade that blends six independent federal data streams: FBI crime statistics, EPA water quality, EPA air quality, NCES school performance, Census municipal fiscal health, and CMS hospital quality. Cities receive an A through F grade based on the composite. Sub-scores that are missing for a city are skipped — we never penalize a city for incomplete federal data.
Where does the data come from?
Crime data comes from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting program. Water comes from EPA SDWIS. Air comes from EPA AQS. Schools come from NCES Common Core of Data and EDFacts. Spending data comes from the Census Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances (ASPEP). Hospital quality comes from CMS HCAHPS and Hospital Compare. Each city page links to the federal source for every sub-score.
Why use federal data instead of resident surveys?
Resident surveys reflect taste, marketing, and selection bias. Federal data reflects reported outcomes — how many crimes occurred, how often water tested clean, how monitored air actually performed. We are not arguing federal data is the only thing that matters; we are arguing it is the most comparable thing across 500+ cities, and it is the only data without an obvious commercial conflict.
How often is the data refreshed?
Each federal source publishes on its own cadence: FBI UCR is annual, EPA AQS is updated frequently with rolling 5-year aggregates, NCES is annual, CMS HCAHPS is quarterly. We re-pull each upstream dataset when a new release is posted and re-compute every city composite. The footer of each city page shows the data vintage.
Can a high MoveScore guarantee I will love a city?
No. A MoveScore measures aggregate, federally-reported outcomes — not whether you will personally like the neighborhood, the climate, the job market, or the people. Treat the score as a sieve: it filters out cities that are objectively struggling on multiple federal indicators. Visiting still matters.
Methodology & Sources
The composite MoveScore is an equal-weighted average of the six normalized sub-scores (crime, water, air, schools, fiscal, hospitals), grade banding A 80+ / B 70-79 / C 60-69 / D 50-59 / F <50, requiring at least three available sub-scores. Read the full methodology for the formula, normalization rules, and exclusions.
Sources: FBI UCR · EPA AQS · EPA SDWIS · NCES CCD · Census ASPEP · CMS Care Compare. All data is public domain.
Last updated 2026-06-04 · 500 cities scored.