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Place dossier plate
SheetGA-ALPHARETTA-GA · Alpharetta, GA 66,355 pop · income 94th pct · 48 tracts
Instrument codes from this place’s ACS population and household income, BEA state COL, FBI safety, national income percentile, photo-finish peer city, home-value band, and matched Census-tract book - not a moving recommendation.
Income neighbourhood around Alpharetta
Lowest/highest poles plus peers nearest Alpharetta on median household income. Full ladder: /browse and /rankings.
median HH income
Albany · lowest
45,201
Albany · lowest
45,201 median HH income
19.9% of the leader · rank #1
New Hyde Park · near
146,571
New Hyde Park · near
146,571 median HH income
64.5% of the leader · rank #2
Pearl River · near
146,574
Pearl River · near
146,574 median HH income
64.5% of the leader · rank #3
Alpharetta · this city
146,581
Alpharetta · this city
146,581 median HH income
64.5% of the leader · rank #4
Malverne · near
146,585
Malverne · near
146,585 median HH income
64.5% of the leader · rank #5
Eldersburg · near
146,598
Eldersburg · near
146,598 median HH income
64.5% of the leader · rank #6
Sammamish · highest
227,273
Sammamish · highest
227,273 median HH income
100.0% of the leader · rank #7
What this shows Neighbourhood peers only - not a full nationwide city board. Open a near peer when the gap is small; open the poles when the spread is wide.
Compare beyond this state
Nationwide peers by population, income, and FBI crime rate
Out-of-state nearest neighbors for Alpharetta on ACS population and median household income
, plus FBI UCR reporting rate when the extract covers this place. Link sets are deduped so each column is a distinct comparison path, not a forecast that peers share a labor market or climate.
Similar population
Nearest out-of-state cities by ACS population. This city: 66,355.
Agency-reported UCR totals per 100,000 population, not a neighborhood safety grade or a prediction of personal risk.
Alpharetta - the verdict
Measured against every US city with at least 1,000 residents, Alpharetta lands in the 94th percentile for household income and the 49th percentile for safety. Source: Census ACS + FBI UCR.
94th
percentile, household income
89th
percentile, home value
51st
percentile, median rent
49th
percentile, safety
📝 How we sourced this
Population, income, and housing-cost figures come from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-year estimates (B-series tables). Crime data uses FBI UCR; climate uses NOAA Climate Normals; school counts come from NCES Common Core of Data; permits use the Census Building Permits Survey (BPS). See our methodology page for the full ETL pipeline and OMB / FIPS join keys.
Data Snapshot: Alpharetta, GA
Georgia's Alpharetta is a small city, with 66,355 residents per the latest Census Bureau ACS figures. Median household income here is $146,581 per year, placing it in the top quartile of U.S. cities for household income, with a poverty rate of 3.5%. Typical homes in Alpharetta are valued around $605,700, and the median resident age is 41.7 years. About 71.7% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, while 67.5% of working-age residents are in the labor force.
Housing supply pressure shows in Census Building Permit Survey data: 226 residential units were authorized in 2024 (Stable), down 1% from five years earlier. Alpharetta reports a comparatively low crime rate: FBI UCR figures show 1401.4 crimes per 100,000 residents, below the national average (reporting is voluntary across agencies, so treat this as reporting activity rather than a definitive danger score).
Living costs in Georgia run below the national norm: BEA Regional Price Parities 2024 puts Georgia at 96.3 on a 100-equals-national-average scale (Below Average). HUD Fair Market Rent for a typical two-bedroom in this state is $1,203 per month. EIA 2023 residential energy data puts Georgia's average monthly utility costs around $225 (state average). On FEMA's National Risk Index, this area rates 39.5 out of 100 for natural-hazard exposure (Very Low).
A decision-led reading path
Useful questions to ask of Alpharetta's data
How this reading path is ordered
This is not a composite city score. It is a city-specific route through the available public records, ordered for this profile so the page starts with questions the joined data can actually answer. The route here runs from population change to housing and income to schools and households to work and mobility to comparison shortlist to reported crime to within-city variation; another city can have a different sequence or fewer supported layers because the source joins are not uniform.
For Alpharetta, city-specific coverage includes matched public-school count, FBI reported-crime rates, annual population history, commute-mode shares, local building permits, within-city Census tract profiles.
All six city-specific enrichment layers used by this profile are present.
Question 1
Is Alpharetta growing, shrinking, or holding steady?
Census PEP estimates show the population grew by +959 residents from 2020 to 2025, a +1.5% change. Separately, Census BPS recorded 226 housing units authorized in 2024. PEP and ACS are different Census series, so the trend is kept separate from the headline ACS population.
Recent estimates point upward. Growth can increase housing demand and service needs, but the permit record must move in the same direction before calling it a supply response; the two series measure different things.
How far does income reach against housing in Alpharetta?
This is a citywide price-to-income reference, not a mortgage-affordability test; it does not include interest rates, taxes, insurance, household size, or an individual buyer's down payment. Housing value is high relative to the citywide income median. That flags a question for comparison, not a verdict: tenure, household composition, financing costs, and the age of the ACS estimate can all change what a resident actually pays.
The home-value-to-income reference is comparatively stretched: the ACS median home value is 4.1 times median household income. The ACS poverty estimate is 3.5%, which keeps the citywide median from describing every household.
Which cities make useful reference points for Alpharetta?
Use the in-state set to hold state policy and broad price conditions more nearly constant. Use the nationwide size set to ask whether cities with a similar resident count produce different housing, income, or commute outcomes. The income set is a third lens, deliberately separate from population matching. The nationwide peer panel below adds a fourth FBI UCR reporting-rate lens, not personal risk.
Within Georgia, the closest population matches are Albany (67,939 residents, $45,201 income); Marietta (61,773 residents, $70,086 income); Stonecrest (59,917 residents, $62,939 income). Outside the state, the closest population matches in this dataset are Queen Creek, AZ (66,369 residents); Union City, NJ (66,375 residents); Sammamish, WA (66,375 residents). A third, income-matched reference set of 6 out-of-state cities sits in the income neighbourhood chart near the Place Dossier plate. These are mechanical peer sets, not claims that the places share a labor market, climate, culture, or metro context.
What can 48 Census tracts reveal inside Alpharetta?
PlainCities matches 48 Census tracts to this city.
That layer breaks the citywide income, rent, and home-value medians into smaller Census geographies, which can reveal differences that one municipal median necessarily hides. A tract is a statistical area, not a locally defined neighborhood or a promise about conditions on a particular block. Start with the city profile for the broad comparison, then use the tract layer to test whether the same housing and income pattern is consistent across the city. Large within-city spreads are a reason to avoid treating any citywide median as a universal resident experience.
These joined records add useful context, but they do not need another full-size panel. Each remains a separate measure with its own geography and source boundary.
Schools and households
What does the education layer cover for Alpharetta?
The city has a broader matched school footprint, but count alone does not describe performance, capacity, program availability, or attendance boundaries. This profile deliberately avoids converting it into an unsupported family-friendliness score.
The NCES join finds 29 public schools within the city match. 71.7% of adults age 25+ hold a bachelor's degree or higher in the ACS estimate. These measures answer different questions: the school count describes local institutions, while adult attainment describes residents and cannot be used as a school-quality rating.
Poverty estimate
3.5%
Bachelor's degree+
71.7%
Matched public schools
29
NCES Common Core of Data school locations plus Census ACS resident characteristics.
What does the journey to work look like in Alpharetta?
Driving alone is the largest reported mode at 56.8%. A reliable mean commute time is not available for this row, so the mode shares carry the comparison.
Mode share answers how workers usually travel; it does not measure congestion, reliability, distance to a particular job, or the quality of transit service. Remote work has a visible role in the local pattern. That can reduce commute exposure for some workers, but it says nothing about job availability or broadband quality; read it alongside income and housing rather than as a stand-alone lifestyle score.
Drive alone
56.8%
Work from home
34.1%
Public transit
0.7%
City-level Census ACS commuting estimates covering 34,982 workers age 16+.
What can the FBI record say about safety in Alpharetta?
The joined FBI UCR record reports 1401.4 violent and property crimes per 100,000 residents, below the 2280.5 national reference used here. The difference is 39% lower in arithmetic terms, but agency participation is voluntary and reporting completeness varies.
Treat this as a reporting-rate comparison, not a prediction of personal risk or a neighborhood-level safety grade. Tourism, daytime population, reporting practices, and variation inside the city are not adjusted away. The state rank and same-state peer table are the narrower comparisons available on this page.
Total reported rate
1401.4
Violent rate
249.3
Property rate
1152.1
FBI Uniform Crime Reporting, incidents per 100,000. Voluntary agency reporting; not a danger score.
Near national cost · BEA RPP 2024, Georgia average
B
City profile score · Alpharetta, GA
73/100
5 published dimensions · ACS/FBI 2023
Comparative score against U.S. cities with population of 1,000 or more on Census ACS medians
(income, poverty, bachelor's share, cost of living) and FBI UCR violent-crime rates when
published. Higher means a stronger standing on those published figures, not a livability
rating, not a recommendation to move, buy, or pick a "best" city. Missing inputs drop out
and redistribute weight.
How it is calculated.
Bachelor's+ share A+
71.7%
Adults with a bachelor's degree or higher; ACS.
Household income A+
$146,581
Median household income vs U.S. cities (pop ≥1,000); ACS.
Poverty rate B+
3.5%
Share of residents below the poverty line; lower scores better on this axis.
Cost of living C
96.3 index
BEA state Regional Price Parities index (100 ≈ national average); lower is stronger on this axis. Same value for every city in the state.
Violent crime D
249 /100k
FBI UCR violent offenses per 100,000 residents; lower is stronger on this axis.
Alpharetta profile (scored ACS/FBI dimensions)Read the chart values
Bachelor's+ share: 98/100 (A+) · 71.7%
Household income: 95/100 (A+) · $146,581
Poverty rate: 75/100 (B+) · 3.5%
Cost of living: 57/100 (C) · 96.3 index
Violent crime: 40/100 (D) · 249 /100k
Where Alpharetta sits on home value vs crime among peer cities
Alpharetta's median home value and FBI crime rate plotted with similar-size and
same-state peers (padded with large cities when the peer set is thin). The second
read: pricey does not always mean safer, check which quadrant this city lands in.
Census ACS median home value vs FBI UCR crime rate - Alpharetta highlighted among 11 peers.Read the chart values
Alpharetta, GA (this city): home $605,700, crime 1,401/100k
Queen Creek, AZ : home $576,600, crime 941/100k
Sammamish, WA : home $1,240,300, crime 567/100k
Conway, AR : home $234,600, crime 2,571/100k
Skokie, IL : home $368,600, crime 2,890/100k
Oshkosh, WI : home $168,400, crime 1,684/100k
Albany, GA : home $118,700, crime 2,432/100k
Marietta, GA : home $401,100, crime 2,109/100k
Brookhaven, GA : home $660,300, crime 2,544/100k
Smyrna, GA : home $409,000, crime 1,540/100k
Valdosta, GA : home $165,300, crime 4,634/100k
How does Alpharetta compare to other US cities?
Where Alpharetta sits among all US cities (population 1,000+) on each measure, computed live from Census and FBI data.
Household income94% higher than other cities
Home value89% pricier than other cities
Median rent51% pricier than other cities
Safety49% safer than other cities
"Safer than" reflects total crime rate from FBI UCR; the others use Census ACS estimates.
A national percentile can hide a lot of local variation: narrowed to Georgia alone, Alpharetta ranks #64 of 166 Georgia cities by lowest crime rate - a different, more locally useful comparison than stacking it against the entire country.
How we calculate these percentiles & ranks
Each percentile compares Alpharetta against every qualifying US city; each in-state rank narrows that to Georgia only. Full formula and direction notes: methodology.
Georgia-relative analysis
Median Gross Rent places Alpharetta near the bottom of Georgia's cities
Among the 638 Georgia cities PlainCities tracks with reported median gross rent data, Alpharetta ranks #1 - the 0th percentile within the state. This is a different, narrower cut than the nationwide percentiles above: it compares Alpharetta only against its own state's cities, not the full US field.
Median Household Income
#10 of 610
98th percentile in Georgia
Median Gross Rent
#1 of 638
0th percentile in Georgia
Median Home Value
#8 of 577
99th percentile in Georgia
Poverty Rate
#540 of 637
15th percentile in Georgia
Bachelor's Degree or Higher
#13 of 638
98th percentile in Georgia
How in-state ranks are ordered
Ranked by raw value (highest first); a higher rank is not automatically "better" for every measure, see each metric's own context above. This is a comparison within Georgia only, not a livability score. See the methodology for the source and calculation.
Gauge source note
94th percentile nationally for median household income · 49th percentile for safety (lower crime rate). Source: Census ACS 2023 / FBI UCR 2023.
Alpharetta's profile vs. every US city
Income, affordability, and safety percentile
Alpharetta's percentile rank on 3 favorable-direction measures (income, affordability, safety) vs. every tracked US city -- higher on every axis is more favorable. Not a composite quality score, just the arithmetic mean of the axes shown.
How Alpharetta's home value compares nationally
Median home value vs. every US city (population 1,000+)
$605,70011th percentilemore affordable than 11% of 15,600 US cities
Show national distribution
Each bar is a $25K-wide band; taller bars hold more US cities. The dashed line + filled bar mark this entry. Hover or tap any bar for its full count, share, and where it sits relative to this entry.
Source U.S. Census Bureau ACS 5-Year Estimates · 2023
Alpharetta's home-value-to-income ratio: 4.1×
ACS median home value divided by median household income.
Band
moderate
3.0–5.0×
National rank
#11,064 of 15,516
More affordable than 29% of tracked cities (pop. 1,000+)
Size class
#326 of 750
Mid-size cities (50,000–199,999)
At 4.1×, Alpharetta sits in the moderate band:
national rank #11,064 of 15,516 and #326 of 750mid-size cities (50,000–199,999).
Income and home value move in the same broad scale; check same-state peers before treating the multiple as an advantage or a warning.
How this ratio is calculated
Ratio = Census ACS 2023 median home value ÷ median household income for cities with both fields and population ≥ 1,000.
Rank 1 = lowest ratio (most compact). Bands match the fleet affordability thresholds used on guides (<3.0 / 3.0–5.0 / >5.0).
This is not a mortgage payment estimate and does not include rates, taxes, insurance, or down payment.
Income distribution context
$146,581Alpharetta, GA median household income (Census ACS)
Show U.S. national quintile / Lorenz context Alpharetta, GA median household income (Census ACS 5-year) with U.S. national quintile shares for context. Diagonal = equality; the curve is national, not computed for Alpharetta, GA.
Key socioeconomic indicators
Bachelor's degree or higher (adults 25+)71.7%
Census ACS S1501, educational attainment
Poverty rate (households below FPL)3.5%
Census ACS S1701, poverty status
Labor force participation (adults 16+)67.5%
Census ACS S2301, share of working-age residents in the labor force
Population
66,355
Median Income
$146,581
Median Home Value
$605,700
Median Age
41.7
Poverty Rate
3.5%
Labor force participation
67.5%
Bachelor's Degree+
71.7%
Safety & Crime
Total Crime Rate
1401.4
per 100,000 residents
Violent Crime
249.3
per 100,000 residents
Property Crime
1152.1
per 100,000 residents
Crime reporting caveat
Reflects incidents reported to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting program — agency participation is voluntary and reporting completeness varies by jurisdiction and year, so this reflects reporting activity, not a definitive danger score. Not adjusted for tourism, commuter, or daytime population.
Schools
Total Schools
29
Public schools in this city
Population Change
PEP vintage
Annual U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates Program (PEP) estimates, 2020–2025
Alpharetta's Census PEP population estimates, 2020–2025.Read the chart as text
Period
Population
2020
65,962 residents
2021
66,225 residents
2022
67,282 residents
2023
67,183 residents
2024
67,123 residents
2025
66,921 residents
Housing Supply
BPS source
Census Bureau Building Permits Survey (BPS) - annual residential permits authorized
🏗️ Stable
Total Permits (2024)
226
housing units authorized
Single-Family
226
detached homes
Multifamily
0
apartments & condos
Supply Intensity
3.4
permits per 1,000 residents
5-Year Permit Trend (2019–2024)
Year
Total
Single-Family
Multifamily
Est. Value
2019
228
204
24
$88.0M
2020
367
227
140
$96.2M
2021
449
404
45
$162.5M
2022
456
201
255
$139.3M
2023
201
201
0
$110.3M
2024
226
226
0
$116.5M
Permit volume decreased 1% from 2019 to 2024.
Commute Patterns
Commute source
How workers travel to work, Census ACS 2023
Drive Alone
56.8%
Carpool
5.1%
Public Transit
0.7%
Walk
1.5%
Work from Home
34.1%
Other
1.8%
Based on 34,982 workers 16 and over.
Monthly Utility Costs
Georgia statewide monthly utility average (EIA 2023): $225
EIA 2023 residential energy data puts average monthly utilities across Georgia at $225 (electricity about $125 , water and sewer about $45 ).
These are Georgia statewide averages, not a meter reading for Alpharetta. Actual bills vary by home size, usage, and local rates. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2023.
Living Costs & Risk
Georgia's BEA cost-of-living index is 96.3 (Below Average; US average = 100, RPP 2024). HUD Fair Market Rent for a typical two-bedroom in the county around Alpharetta is $1,203/mo. FEMA's National Risk Index, averaged to Georgia statewide on PlainCities, rates natural-hazard exposure at 39.5 / 100 (Very Low).
Cost/risk geography note
Cost of living is a Georgia statewide BEA average; rent is a county-level HUD Fair Market Rent for the county Alpharetta sits in; the FEMA hazard score shown here is a statewide average of county NRI inputs, not a parcel-level reading.
How Alpharetta compares to similar-size Georgia cities
Same-state peer method
Closest same-state population matches, not geographic neighbors. Population + median household income come from Census Bureau ACS 5-year B01001 and B19013.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau ACS 5-Year 2023, FBI UCR, NCES CCD, Census BPS 2024, Census ACS B08301/B08136, U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2023, BEA Regional Price Parities 2024, HUD Fair Market Rents 2026, FEMA National Risk Index.