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San Antonio, 
United States
1,686,163 people lived in San Antonio in 2025. It is the 290th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 13th largest in the United States.
The UN measures every city in the world the same way, by where the buildings are rather than where the boundary runs, so this figure and San Antonio's own can differ widely. What counts as a city here.
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries
People · every five years · 1975 to 2050
How San Antonio grew
Where San Antonio had 10 people in 1985, it had 209 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 2.4 million people in 2050. It passed a million people between 2010 and 2015. The UN first counts it as a city in 1985, when it passed 50,000 people.
projected (after 2025) · how sure the UN is: high moderate low
How to read this: read it left to right, 1975 to 2050, one column every five years, the height being people. Hatching marks the projected years. Below, a strip of the UN's confidence: strong colour where the census maps are recent and detailed, pale where they are not, blank where the place was not counted as a city.
People · your family's years · 1975 to 2050
San Antonio through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in San Antonio in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
United States · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: the United States and its 348 cities in 2025, each a dot whose area is its number of people (the largest is New York City). San Antonio is ringed, in colour; the other cities are grey. Neighbouring countries are outlines.
Area and built-up land · km²
How much land it covers
In 2025, San Antonio covered 696 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 154 km² of it. That is 91 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 10 by 10 metres. Since 1985, its built-up land has grown to 15.4 times its size, and its people are 20.9 times as many.
How to read this: pale is the whole of the city's land; the stronger square inside it is what is actually built on. The three are drawn to the same scale, so a larger square really is more land, and hatching means the year is the UN's projection rather than a count.
Of every 100 people in the United States
Its share of the United States
Of every 1,000 people in the United States in 2025, 5 lived in San Antonio, which is 1.7 million people.
How to read this: 1,000 squares, one for every 1,000th person in the United States; the coloured squares live in San Antonio. The grey rest live in other cities, in towns or in the countryside.
Ranked by people · 2025
Cities of a similar size
In the world, 2025
- 286 Vancouver Canada1,707,865
- 287 Dhulian India1,699,325
- 288 Johor Bahru Malaysia1,695,838
- 289 Mecca Saudi Arabia1,692,152
- 290 San Antonio1,686,163
- 291 Nantong China1,684,417
- 292 Sao Goncalo Brazil1,679,246
- 293 Mosul Iraq1,665,214
- 294 Pointe-Noire Republic of the Congo1,662,537
In the United States, 2025
- 225 Philadelphia2,232,420
- 232 Las Vegas2,183,655
- 251 Phoenix1,972,021
- 260 San Diego1,915,114
- 290 San Antonio1,686,163
- 296 Boston1,639,797
- 329 Dallas1,521,118
- 333 Sacramento1,514,661
- 334 Austin1,513,032
How to read this: the number before each name is its place among all 12,138 cities in the world in 2025; bars are people, on one scale per list. Only cities that reach 300,000 people have a page here, so a gap in the numbers is a smaller city.
Apparatus
Sources and method
The figures for San Antonio are the UN's own, at five-year steps: an estimate for each of 1985 to 2025, then projection to 2050. Projected years are drawn hatched, and the UN publishes no range of uncertainty for a city. What a city means here, how the UN measures one, and why that number can differ from the one San Antonio publishes about itself: how the figures here are put together.
Sources: UN WUP 2025 · Natural Earth · flag-icons. Every source, its licence and how to cite it →
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries