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 churches386Residents per church~2,390Williamson
Population339,811Active churches151Residents per church~2,250Travis
Population194,031Active churches72Residents per church~2,690Williamson
Population182,962Active churches93Residents per church~1,970Hays
Population132,671Active churches55Residents per church~2,410
Show all fifteen
Travis
Population126,830Active churches26Residents per church~4,880Williamson
Population103,198Active churches74Residents per church~1,390Travis
Population86,480Active churches26Residents per church~3,330Hays
Population77,080Active churches52Residents per church~1,480Hays
Population58,887Active churches33Residents per church~1,780Bastrop
Population40,000Active churches42Residents per church~950Bastrop
Population32,627Active churches27Residents per church~1,210Caldwell
Population31,133Active churches48Residents per church~650Bastrop
Population22,957Active churches37Residents per church~620Williamson
Population21,144Active churches24Residents per church~880
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 2026-09-14.
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 2,070 residents, and the spread runs from roughly 620 to nearly 4,880.
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.
- 4,880
- 3,330
- 2,690
- 2,410
- 2,390
- 2,250
- 1,970
- 1,780
- 1,480
- 1,390
- 1,210
- 950
- 880
- 650
- 620
Across the fifteen divisions together, about 2,070 residents for each church
All fifteen divisions, 1,146 churches as of 2026-09-14, against population from the current census edition.
View 2 · Chronological
Of 1,146 living congregations, 805 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 805 of 1,146 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 2026-09-14.
View 3 · Ranked
Since 2014 the metro has planted at least 150 recorded congregations, and Bastrop has no recorded plant at all.
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.
If your church could send, start where nothing has landed in a decade: Bastrop.
150 congregations carry a recorded founding year of 2014 or later, out of 805 with any recorded year among 1,146 churches as of 2026-09-14. 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: 378 of 1,146 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 1,146 congregations as of 2026-09-14. Family is the only tier this site publishes; the methodology page explains why.
View 5 · Composition
No two divisions carry the same church: 46 of 93 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.
- Austin386 churches
- Round Rock and Georgetown151 churches
- Cedar Park and Liberty Hill93 churches
- Northeast Travis72 churches
- Taylor74 churches
- Jarrell24 churches
- Elgin37 churches
- Northwest Travis26 churches
- Southwest Travis26 churches
- Kyle and Buda55 churches
- Bastrop27 churches
- Lockhart48 churches
- Dripping Springs and Wimberley33 churches
- San Marcos52 churches
- Cedar Creek and Red Rock42 churches
All 1,146 congregations as of 2026-09-14, 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 4,880 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 4,880 residents per church
- 2Southwest Travis: $140,390 median income, about 3,330 residents per church
- 3Northeast Travis: $104,974 median income, about 2,690 residents per church
- 4Kyle and Buda: $104,875 median income, about 2,410 residents per church
- 5Austin: $92,168 median income, about 2,390 residents per church
- 6Round Rock and Georgetown: $106,295 median income, about 2,250 residents per church
- 7Cedar Park and Liberty Hill: $122,440 median income, about 1,970 residents per church
- 8Dripping Springs and Wimberley: $135,475 median income, about 1,780 residents per church
- 9San Marcos: $51,139 median income, about 1,480 residents per church
- 10Taylor: $113,246 median income, about 1,390 residents per church
- 11Bastrop: $87,527 median income, about 1,210 residents per church
- 12Cedar Creek and Red Rock: $86,747 median income, about 950 residents per church
- 13Jarrell: $98,930 median income, about 880 residents per church
- 14Lockhart: $74,910 median income, about 650 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 1,146 congregations as of 2026-09-14. Income describes households, not congregations.
View 7 · Ranked
At least 150 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 American Sign Language, Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, and Vietnamese, and one each in Amharic, Cantonese, Chinese, Creole, Farsi, Japanese, Kinyarwanda, Latin, Nepali, 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 1,130 of 1,146 congregations, of which 1,048 serve in English. Everything below is in addition to that.
View 8 · Composition
326 of the metro's 1,146 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: 658 congregations, 57.4 percent
- Undetermined: 326 congregations, 28.4 percent
- Heterodox: 100 congregations, 8.7 percent
- Non-Protestant: 62 congregations, 5.4 percent
If you pastor one of them, write to us. We would rather know you than guess.
All 1,146 congregations, as of 2026-09-14. 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.