Topics
Singapore, 
Singapore
4,963,998 people lived in Singapore in 2025. It is the 84th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the largest in Singapore, where it is the capital.
Like every city on this site, Singapore is counted as a built-up area seen from above rather than as a city government's territory. Why that changes the number.
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries
People · every five years · 1975 to 2050
How Singapore grew
Where Singapore had 10 people in 1975, it had 24.8 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 5.1 million people in 2050. On the UN's projection it passes five million people between 2025 and 2030.
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
Singapore through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Singapore in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Singapore · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: Singapore is the dot in colour with a ring around it. The grey dots are the other cities of Singapore in 2025, 2 in all, each drawn with an area that matches its people. Countries next door are outlines only.
Area and built-up land · km²
How much land it covers
In 2025, Singapore covered 367 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 103 km² of it. That is 21 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 5 by 5 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown by 85%, and its people are 2.5 times as many.
How to read this: the outer pale square stands for all the land the city covers, and the solid square inside it for the part with buildings, roads and the like on it. All three squares share a scale, so you can compare them by eye. A hatched one is a year the UN has projected.
Of every 100 people in Singapore
Its share of Singapore
Of every 100 people in Singapore in 2025, 85 lived in Singapore, which is 5.0 million people.
How to read this: shrink Singapore to 100 people and this is what you get. The coloured squares are the ones who would live in Singapore; the grey ones are everybody else, in other cities, in towns and out in the country.
Ranked by people · 2025
Cities of a similar size
In the world, 2025
- 80 Kochi India5,077,670
- 81 Hanoi Vietnam5,068,414
- 82 Lucknow India5,052,444
- 83 Chattogram Bangladesh4,983,553
- 84 Singapore4,963,998
- 85 Kampala Uganda4,880,943
- 86 Zhengzhou China4,878,035
- 87 Hefei China4,867,000
- 88 Islāmābād Pakistan4,860,084
In Singapore, 2025
- 84 Singapore4,963,998
- 593 Sembawang878,551
How to read this: the figure in front of a name is where that city stands among the 12,138 cities the UN counted in 2025, and each bar is its people, on one scale per list. Numbers are missing where a city has fewer than 300,000 people and so has no page of its own.
Apparatus
Sources and method
The figures for Singapore are the UN's own, at five-year steps: an estimate for each of 1975 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 Singapore 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