Is Leander one of the fastest-growing cities in Texas?

In short

• Leander grew about 54% from 2020 to mid-2025, from about 59,200 to about 91,100 people.¹
• That is the fourth-fastest growth among the 76 Texas cities with at least 50,000 people (our math).¹²
• Georgetown, also in Williamson County, ranks third. Two smaller cities near Houston and Dallas grew much faster.¹²

Numbers marked “our math” are our estimates, not official figures. The notes show the inputs and the steps.

How it works

• The U.S. Census Bureau makes a yearly estimate for every city in Texas. Each one is for July 1.¹
• We start from the bureau’s April 2020 base number and compare it with July 2025. That is a little over five years.¹
• We only rank cities with at least 50,000 people in 2025. Very small towns can show huge percent changes from just a few new homes.²

What the numbers show

Rank	City	2020 base	July 2025	Growth (our math)
1	Fulshear	16,269	64,630	+297%
2	Celina	17,099	64,427	+277%
3	Georgetown	67,436	106,907	+58.5%
4	Leander	59,235	91,132	+53.8%
5	Kyle	45,686	69,917	+53.0%
6	Little Elm	46,044	62,727	+36.2%
7	New Braunfels	90,394	122,492	+35.5%
8	Conroe	89,899	119,564	+33.0%

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2025 city estimates. Cities with at least 50,000 people in July 2025.¹

• By number of people added, Leander ranks 11th in Texas, with about 31,900 more people. Big cities like San Antonio added far more people, but their percent growth was small.¹²
• By size, Leander is the 47th-largest city in Texas (our math).¹²

The other side

• Fast growth is not a grade. It can mean new homes and jobs. It can also mean crowded roads and higher costs for water, sewer and safety. This page does not judge which.
• Estimates are not counts. The bureau revises them each year. The true number will not be known until the 2030 census.¹
• City lines change. When a city annexes land, people living there are added to its count. The Census file does not say how much of each city’s growth came from that.
• The city uses its own number. Its 2025 audit uses 92,872, a bit higher than the Census estimate. See city population growth.²

Changes to this page

• Nov. 2, 2026: Plainer wording about annexation.
• Nov. 2, 2026: Rewrote the questions to ask so each is open, neutral and addressed to the public body.
• Nov. 2, 2026: We checked every figure against its source. We reworded the other-side points so they stick to what the sources show.

Questions to ask

• How much of the city’s growth came from new homes and how much from new city land?
• What growth pace do the city’s water, sewer and road plans assume?

What we still don’t know

• How much of the growth in each city came from annexation. The Census file does not say.

Footnotes

1. U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2025 city and town population estimates for Texas (SUB-EST2025_48), incorporated places: April 1, 2020 estimates base and July 1, 2025 estimate, for each place listed. https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/popest/datasets/2020-2025/cities/totals/sub-est2025_48.csv ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

2. Our math. Growth = (July 2025 − 2020 base) ÷ 2020 base; Leander (91,132 − 59,235) ÷ 59,235 = +53.8%, a gain of 31,897. Ranked among the 76 Texas incorporated places with July 2025 estimate of 50,000 or more. Size rank among all 1,224 Texas incorporated places by July 2025 estimate. City audit population: Leander 2025 annual financial report, statistical section. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶