Montana cities and towns

This directory lists every place the US Census Bureau tabulates in Montana, ranked from the largest to the smallest by population. Incorporated cities, towns and villages appear alongside census-designated places (CDPs) — unincorporated communities that have no local government of their own but are counted separately because they have a recognised name and settled population. The suffix in each name ("city", "town", "village", "CDP") is the Census legal/statistical description, which is why you will see entries such as "Billings city".

The largest place in Montana is Billings city with 118,321 residents, and the 497 places on this page hold 779,980 people between them. Median household income across the listed places runs from $2,499 to $250,001, and median home values range from $9,999 to $2,000,001 — a spread that shows how much local housing markets diverge inside a single state.

Every figure comes from the American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year five-year estimates, which average survey responses over sixty months. That averaging is what makes small towns measurable at all, but it also means the numbers describe the period as a whole rather than today. Blank cells are estimates the Census suppressed because the local sample was too small to publish reliably. Select any place to open its full profile with affordability ratios, poverty and homeownership rates, and links to nearby communities of similar size.

Population in Montana is tightly clustered: the ten largest places carry 56% of the 779,980 residents counted across all 497. Billings city sets the pace and everything outside the top ten is genuinely small, so statewide averages describe the cluster rather than the state. These are mostly very small areas — the median place counts 203 residents. Rankings at the bottom of this list are within each other's margin of error, so treat close positions as ties.

On housing, Montana tracks the national pattern closely: $231,700 median home value against $59,529 median income, a ratio of 3.9 versus 3.9 nationally. Rent stays modest against earnings — $825 a month, roughly 17% of median household income over a year. The statewide midpoint hides real variation, though — that is what the spread below is for.

Incomes fan out sharply inside Montana. Strip the outliers and the top-decile place still earns 2.68× the bottom-decile one ($98,167 against $36,695); include them and Gallatin River Ranch CDP tops the list at $250,001 and Birch Creek Colony CDP anchors the bottom at $2,499. A single "Montana average" is averaging across two different economies.

Read the blanks carefully: 155 of 497 rows (31%) have at least one estimate the Census withheld because the local sample was too thin to publish reliably. In a state with 402 places under a thousand residents, that is expected, not an error on this page.

How many places does Montana have? 497 appear in the current federal tabulation, counting incorporated cities, towns and villages together with census-designated places — unincorporated communities with no local government of their own. 81% of them have fewer than a thousand residents, so the list is far longer than the number of towns you would recognise by name.

Which Montana row should I compare mine against? Not the state median — it is pulled by the Montana core. Compare against places in the same population band, which for most of this list means the entries below the top ten.

How current is this? Every figure comes from the American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year release published by the US Census Bureau, ACS 2019-2023 5-year estimates. It reflects the full survey window rather than a single date, and it is the most recent vintage available for places this small.