Download the data
Every dataset behind this site, as CSV, free. No sign-up, no key, no limit. Generated from the same data the pages render, so a download is never staler than the site.
| Dataset | Rows | Size | Source | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UK towns and cities Every populated place we hold for the UK, with current population, county, nation and coordinates. Includes the 2005 World Gazetteer figure where the two sources describe the same settlement. On the site: /uk/ |
6,358 | 737 KB | GeoNames (current), World Gazetteer 2005 (historical) | CC BY 4.0 |
| UK population by local authority, 2001–2024 Official mid-year population estimates for all 361 UK local authorities, one row per authority per year. Tidy format, ready for analysis. On the site: /uk/trends/ |
8,664 | 360 KB | ONS, National Records of Scotland, NISRA (via Nomis) | Open Government Licence v3 |
| The 76 official UK cities Every place holding formal city status by letters patent, with population and the 2022 Platinum Jubilee grants marked. City status is a legal designation, not a size threshold. On the site: /uk/cities/ |
76 | 3 KB | City status: letters patent. Population: GeoNames, 2021 census | CC BY 4.0 |
| Food businesses by English district Takeaway, restaurant/cafe and pub counts per district from the FSA's statutory register, with per-resident rates and the district's deprivation score. Registration is a legal requirement, so these are full counts rather than samples. On the site: /uk/takeaways/ |
264 | 12 KB | Food Standards Agency register (July 2026); ONS mid-2024 estimates; MHCLG IoD2019 | Open Government Licence v3 |
| High street businesses by UK district Business premises by category for every UK local authority: hairdressers and beauty salons, pubs and bars, licensed restaurants, takeaways, bakers and cake shops, fitness facilities, estate agents, funeral directors, veterinary practices, second-hand goods shops. All counts rounded to the nearest 5 by ONS, so a zero means fewer than about three. On the site: /uk/high-street/ |
361 | 24 KB | ONS Business Counts (IDBR local units) 2025, via Nomis | Open Government Licence v3 |
| Countries by population Every country and territory with current population, capital, land area and the number of places we hold for it. On the site: /world/ |
246 | 10 KB | GeoNames | CC BY 4.0 |
| Major cities worldwide The largest places in every country, with region, population and coordinates. On the site: /world/ |
9,312 | 531 KB | GeoNames | CC BY 4.0 |
| World Gazetteer, 2005 edition (archive) The recovered 2005 World Gazetteer: 148,368 places in 237 countries, typed as place, agglomeration or administrative division. The only public copy we know of. On the site: /gazetteer/ |
148,368 | 8.2 MB | Stefan Helders, World Gazetteer (2005) | Attribution to Stefan Helders requested |
How you may use it
Our compilation is published under CC BY 4.0: use it anywhere, including commercially, including in AI training and retrieval, as long as you credit population-statistics.com with a link where the medium allows one.
Upstream terms still apply to the underlying figures, and they are named per dataset above. ONS, NRS, NISRA and FSA data is Open Government Licence v3; GeoNames is CC BY 4.0. Both require attribution to the original source as well as to us.
We deliberately add no restrictions beyond that, and could not if we wanted to: CC BY 4.0 forbids imposing extra conditions on material built from it. Population figures are facts, and facts are not ours to own.
What we ask, and why
The link, that's all. It is the same bargain the World Gazetteer struck when it published at this domain from 2001, and it earned that project citations across Wikipedia in a dozen languages. Being cited is how a data site survives.
Reading the figures correctly
One caution that matters more here than anywhere else on the site. A population figure is meaningless without knowing which geography it describes: London is about 8.9 million as a local authority area, roughly 9.7 million as a built-up area, and 8,072 as the City of London. Each CSV names its geography in the column headers and its source in the download table on this page. If you are merging our data with someone else's, check they mean the same thing by a place name before you join on it.
Vintages differ too. The ONS series is dated per year. GeoNames figures are recent but drawn from national censuses of varying dates, so they are not all the same year. The 2005 archive is 2005 and nothing else.
Embeds
If you want the charts rather than the numbers, every chart and map on the site can be embedded free on your own site.
Something missing?
If there is a cut of this data you need and we don't publish, ask via SEOBurf. It is usually a few lines of code at our end.