State of the City / Explore
The fifteen divisions
Census County Divisions are larger than a neighborhood and smaller than a county, the closest thing the region has to a map of its actual communities. Choose the one where you live or serve.
Drawing the fifteen divisions
Darker is more residents for each church to reach. It is a measure of scale, not of faithfulness.
All fifteen · By population
Travis
Population922,674Active churches434Residents per church~2,130Williamson
Population339,811Active churches160Residents per church~2,120Travis
Population194,031Active churches65Residents per church~2,990Williamson
Population182,962Active churches86Residents per church~2,130Hays
Population132,671Active churches57Residents per church~2,330
Show all fifteen
Travis
Population126,830Active churches30Residents per church~4,230Williamson
Population103,198Active churches80Residents per church~1,290Travis
Population86,480Active churches28Residents per church~3,090Hays
Population77,080Active churches54Residents per church~1,430Hays
Population58,887Active churches30Residents per church~1,960Bastrop
Population40,000Active churches42Residents per church~950Bastrop
Population32,627Active churches29Residents per church~1,130Caldwell
Population31,133Active churches45Residents per church~690Bastrop
Population22,957Active churches37Residents per church~620Williamson
Population21,144Active churches19Residents per church~1,110
Choose a division on the map or in the list. Either way you get the same summary, and a way through to the division and its prayer guide. Demographics 2026 edition, ACS 2020-2024. Church counts from the Society database as of 2026-10-10.
The metro as a whole
Eight views of the church across all fifteen divisions
These describe congregations rather than residents, because the demographic portrait of Austin is already published in better detail elsewhere, and this is the part we can add.
View 1 · Ranked
Across the fifteen divisions, one church serves about every 1,980 residents, and the spread runs from roughly 620 to nearly 4,230.
How far each church is stretched
Residents for every active church, by division, largest first. This is the map's shading made precise, and it is the measure the prayer guides argue from. Choose a division here, on the map, or in the list above, and all three point at it together.
- 4,230
- 3,090
- 2,990
- 2,330
- 2,130
- 2,130
- 2,120
- 1,960
- 1,430
- 1,290
- 1,130
- 1,110
- 950
- 690
- 620
Across the fifteen divisions together, about 1,980 residents for each church
All fifteen divisions, 1,196 churches as of 2026-10-10, against population from the current census edition.
View 2 · Chronological
Of 1,196 living congregations, 838 can still tell you the year they began, and the oldest has held worship since 1835.
When these churches were founded
Congregations by the decade they began, oldest bucket first. This is chronological rather than ranked, so the shape over time is the thing to read.
The oldest witness in the metro stands in Bastrop. Read its story.
Founding year is recorded for 838 of 1,196 congregations, 70 percent, and only those are drawn. The first bar gathers every congregation founded before 1850, the earliest in 1835. Read the earlier decades as a floor rather than a count: every bar counts congregations still active today, so a church founded in the 1880s and since closed leaves no mark here. The last bar covers a decade still in progress. Church figures from the Society database as of 2026-10-10.
View 3 · Ranked
Since 2014 the metro has planted at least 164 recorded congregations.
Where the new churches are landing
Congregations founded in 2014 or later, by division, most first. A division at zero has no recorded plant in a decade when the metro added hundreds of thousands of residents, and that absence is the finding.
164 congregations carry a recorded founding year of 2014 or later, out of 838 with any recorded year among 1,196 churches as of 2026-10-10. New plants are the congregations most likely to lack a recorded year, so every bar is a floor.
View 4 · Ranked
The largest church family in Austin is no family at all: 404 of 1,196 congregations belong to no denomination.
Which families the church here belongs to
Every congregation carries a family, so this view is complete. The single largest group is the one that belongs to no denomination at all.
All 1,196 congregations as of 2026-10-10. Family is the only tier this site publishes; the methodology page explains why.
View 5 · Composition
No two divisions carry the same church: 42 of 86 congregations in Cedar Park and Liberty Hill are non-denominational/independent, while Lockhart's largest family is Baptist.
How each division's church is composed
The three largest families in every division, drawn to each division's own scale. Cedar Park's half-non-denominational profile and Lockhart's Baptist depth are different churches to pray for, and each card links to its division.
- Austin434 churches
- Round Rock and Georgetown160 churches
- Cedar Park and Liberty Hill86 churches
- Northeast Travis65 churches
- Taylor80 churches
- Jarrell19 churches
- Elgin37 churches
- Northwest Travis30 churches
- Southwest Travis28 churches
- Kyle and Buda57 churches
- Bastrop29 churches
- Lockhart45 churches
- Dripping Springs and Wimberley30 churches
- San Marcos54 churches
- Cedar Creek and Red Rock42 churches
All 1,196 congregations as of 2026-10-10, grouped by the same family tier the directory uses. Three families per division; the division pages carry the full breakdown.
View 6 · Scatter
The metro's wealthiest division is also its thinnest churched: Northwest Travis, at one congregation for every 4,230 neighbors.
Wealth and how far the church is stretched
Each dot is a division: its median household income against its residents for every active church. The metro's wealthiest corners are among its thinnest churched, and the dots link to their divisions.
- 1Northwest Travis: $143,429 median income, about 4,230 residents per church
- 2Southwest Travis: $140,390 median income, about 3,090 residents per church
- 3Northeast Travis: $104,974 median income, about 2,990 residents per church
- 4Kyle and Buda: $104,875 median income, about 2,330 residents per church
- 5Austin: $92,168 median income, about 2,130 residents per church
- 6Cedar Park and Liberty Hill: $122,440 median income, about 2,130 residents per church
- 7Round Rock and Georgetown: $106,295 median income, about 2,120 residents per church
- 8Dripping Springs and Wimberley: $135,475 median income, about 1,960 residents per church
- 9San Marcos: $51,139 median income, about 1,430 residents per church
- 10Taylor: $113,246 median income, about 1,290 residents per church
- 11Bastrop: $87,527 median income, about 1,130 residents per church
- 12Jarrell: $98,930 median income, about 1,110 residents per church
- 13Cedar Creek and Red Rock: $86,747 median income, about 950 residents per church
- 14Lockhart: $74,910 median income, about 690 residents per church
- 15Elgin: $91,588 median income, about 620 residents per church
See Northwest Travis, where the stretch is greatest.
Median household income from the current census edition; residents per church from 1,196 congregations as of 2026-10-10. Income describes households, not congregations.
View 7 · Ranked
At least 185 congregations worship in Spanish, in a metro where roughly one resident in three is Hispanic.
The languages Austin's churches serve in
Beyond English, which the view leaves out so the rest can be read. A congregation serving two languages is counted under each, so these do not sum to a church count.
Two congregations each worship in Chinese, Farsi, Kinyarwanda, Swahili, and Telugu, and one each in Burmese, Creole, Haitian Creole, Japanese, Kinyamulenge, Latin, Matu, Nepali, Romanian, Taiwanese, and Twi.
Their pastors often carry the work without the networks their English-speaking neighbors take for granted. Pray for them by division.
Language is recorded for 1,170 of 1,196 congregations, of which 1,050 serve in English. Everything below is in addition to that.
View 8 · Composition
347 of the metro's 1,196 congregations carry too little public information to be known well, and that is the number we most want to change.
What public information lets us say about theological standing
Every active congregation in the metro, by what its own public witness lets our research say. The second-largest group is the one we cannot read at all, and that group is an invitation to relationship rather than a verdict on anyone.
- Historically Orthodox: 680 congregations, 56.9 percent
- Undetermined: 347 congregations, 29.0 percent
- Heterodox: 108 congregations, 9.0 percent
- Non-Protestant: 61 congregations, 5.1 percent
If you pastor one of them, write to us. We would rather know you than guess.
All 1,196 congregations, as of 2026-10-10. These four numbers are published for the metro as a whole and deliberately not by division, because in a small division an aggregate becomes an identification. No congregation's classification is published, here or anywhere on this site. How the four values are defined is on the methodology page.
Shifts in the Austin metro religious landscape
We count congregations, not Christians. This is the one measure on this site that comes from someone else's survey, and it is the reason the rest of the page matters: between 2012 and 2024 the share of adults here who are practicing Christians fell from 46 percent to 26 percent, while the share who are not Christians at all rose from 18 percent to 44 percent.
- Non-Christians
- Non-practicing Christians
- Practicing Christians
Fold the two Christian bands together and the plainer story appears: 82 percent of adults here identified as Christian in 2012 and 56 percent did in 2024. Austin is approaching 50/50, Christian to non-Christian.
Read this as a shape rather than a set of exact values. Practicing Christian is a survey's definition rather than a headcount, and every share here is an estimate drawn from a sample. The readings also do not all come from the same survey, and two surveys asking differently about the same thing will not agree exactly, so part of the movement between them is the instrument rather than the city. What the four readings agree on is the direction, not the year anything crosses.
Sources: Barna FaithView; Pew Research Center, 2023-24 U.S. Religious Landscape Study, whose Austin-metro figures rest on 294 respondents and carry a margin of error of 7.7 percentage points. Pew reports no practicing category: the 2024 share is its attendance measure for this metro, the 18 percent of adults who attend religious services at least weekly plus the 8 percent who attend once or twice a month, which counts everyone who attends that often rather than Christians alone. Estimates drawn from outside surveys of people rather than from our own database of congregations, which is why this figure carries its own date, changes only when someone else measures it again, and appears nowhere else on this site. Reviewed 2026-08-17.
What sticks out to you, and what are you going to do about it?
Numbers this size are easy to gloss over. Here are three things worth doing with them:
- Open your division's prayer guide and pray it this week, out loud, while you walk or drive the place it describes.
- If your church could plant or send, consider the places where the church is stretched furthest, and write to us if you would like to take action.
- Let us know what we got wrong. Email info@missionatx.org. This site gets better when the people it describes correct it.
This is a living count rather than a report: we keep the church data current, we correct it when you tell us we have it wrong, and every month we write about what it means.