Varanasi has a population of 1,164,404, making it the 43rd largest place we list in India. It is in Uttar Pradesh.
Varanasi holds under a tenth of one per cent of India's 1,476,625,576 people. Mumbai, the largest place we list there, is 11 times its size. The World Gazetteer published 1,164,404 for Varanasi in 2005 and GeoNames still carries that same figure, so there is no measured change to report.
The 2005 figure comes from the World Gazetteer archive restored on this site. Why figures differ.
Nearby in size
| Place | Region | Population |
|---|---|---|
| Ghāziābād | Uttar Pradesh | 1,199,191 |
| Dhanbad | Jharkhand | 1,196,214 |
| Aurangabad | Maharashtra | 1,175,116 |
| Amritsar | Punjab | 1,159,227 |
| Vijayawada | Andhra Pradesh | 1,143,232 |
| Ranchi | Jharkhand | 1,120,374 |
Figures are the latest available in GeoNames (CC BY 4.0), which draws on national censuses of varying dates — treat them as recent, not same-year. Country totals are UN World Population Prospects 2024 (medium variant) where the UN lists the country separately; the handful it reports under a parent state keep a GeoNames figure and are marked as such. Sources & method.