Shade each region
Colour intensity carries the value. The right choice for rates, shares and per-capita figures, which are already adjusted for how big or populous a region is.
Open the templateAll maps
US County Map Maker
A blank county map to print, and a builder to fill it with your own data. Download the free outline of all 3,000-plus US counties, or upload a spreadsheet and publish an interactive county map you can embed anywhere.
Blank US counties map, free to download
All 3136 counties, as a clean outline. Print it, colour it in, or drop it into a document — no account and no attribution required.
Free for any use, including commercial and classroom. Generated from the same boundaries the builder uses.
Download SVGWhat a US counties map shows
The county is the smallest geography most American data is published at, and the one where national averages finally break apart into something recognisable. A state-level map of the United States has fifty shapes and tends to show you politics; the same measure drawn across 3,100 counties shows you the Black Belt, the Rio Grande valley, the Appalachian coalfields and the ring of suburbs around every large city. That resolution is the reason to use this map — and also the reason to be careful with it, because counties vary enormously in population and a county map gives every one of them the same visual weight as the land it occupies.
Three ways to draw US counties
Shade the regions when your number is a rate, size a marker when it is a count. Getting this backwards is the most common way a data map misleads.
A sized marker per region
One symbol on each region, scaled by value. Use it for counts and totals, where shading the land area would just redraw the population map.
Open the templateProportional circles
Circles sized by value, sitting over the outline. Reads well when a few regions dominate and small ones would otherwise disappear into a shade.
Open the templateWhen to map US counties
Your data is published by county or by FIPS code
Census tables, CDC and BLS releases, election returns and most state agency data all key on county. If your spreadsheet has a FIPS column, this is the map it was made for.
The state average is hiding the pattern
Almost every interesting geographic story in the United States is sub-state. Counties are where an urban/rural split, a border effect or a river valley becomes visible.
You are showing a rate, share or per-capita figure
Unemployment rates, vaccination shares, median income, turnout percentage. Rates are already adjusted for size, which is exactly what a choropleth needs.
You need a printable blank map
Classroom worksheets, planning sessions and colour-by-hand exercises. The blank outline above is free to download, print and reuse.
When not to map US counties
You are mapping raw counts, not rates
Shading counties by total cases or total sales just redraws the population map: Los Angeles County will always be dark. Use a symbol or bubble map, where the circle is sized by the count and the land area stops competing with it.
Your story is about cities
Counties and metro areas are not the same shape, and in New England they barely relate. If the unit you actually mean is a metro, a point map of cities carries it better.
The numbers are small and noisy
Rates computed from a handful of events swing wildly in low-population counties, and a county map will show that noise as a bold pattern across the empty middle of the country. Aggregate up, or use a multi-year average.
You only have state-level data
Do not spread a state figure across its counties to fill the map. Use the US states map instead and say what you actually know.
How to make a US counties map
From a spreadsheet to a published map, step by step.
Download the blank map, or start from the template
The free outline above is a plain SVG — print it, or drop it into a document. To build with data, open the PlotSet USA (counties) template, which comes with sample data already bound.
Put FIPS codes in the first column
Five-digit county FIPS codes are the reliable join. County names repeat across states — there are more than thirty Washington Counties — so names alone will silently mismatch.
Upload or connect your data
Import a CSV or Excel file, paste from a spreadsheet, or connect a Google Sheet so the map can be refreshed when the source updates.
Pick the style that fits the measure
Shade the counties for a rate, or switch to symbols or bubbles for a count. It is the same map and the same data; only the encoding changes.
Choose a colour scale on purpose
Sequential for a measure that runs low to high, diverging only when there is a real midpoint — a national average, zero change, a 50 per cent line. Stepped scales read more precisely than a continuous gradient at this many regions.
Publish, embed or export
Publish for a live interactive map with hover tooltips on every county, or export a PNG, SVG or PDF for a report.
Start from the US counties template with sample data already loaded, then swap in your own.
Open the templateGetting your US counties data to join
What the place column has to look like, and where to find data that already matches.
Join on the five-digit FIPS code
The first two digits are the state, the last three the county. Keep it as text: Alabama's counties start 01 and a spreadsheet will happily strip that leading zero and turn 01001 into 1001.
Counties are not the only unit in the file
Louisiana has parishes, Alaska has boroughs and census areas, and several states contain independent cities that are counted as county equivalents. All of them are in this map and all of them need a row.
Boundaries move, occasionally
Connecticut replaced its counties with planning regions in 2022 and Alaska redraws boroughs from time to time. If a handful of regions come out blank, a boundary vintage mismatch is usually why.
Where to get county data
The Census Bureau's American Community Survey, the CDC's WONDER and PLACES releases, BLS local area unemployment statistics and the USDA's county-level economic data all publish with FIPS codes included.
Common mistakes on a US counties map
Shading a count instead of a rate
The most common county-map error, and the one that turns every map into a population map. If the number gets bigger simply because more people live there, size a symbol by it rather than shading the county.
Joining on county names
Names are not unique and are not spelled consistently — St. Louis city and St. Louis County, De Kalb and DeKalb, Doña Ana with and without its tilde. Use FIPS.
Letting empty land dominate
The largest counties in the west hold the fewest people, and on a choropleth they shout. Say so in the caption, or pair the map with a bar chart of the top counties by population.
Too many colour steps
Nobody can distinguish nine shades of blue across 3,100 small shapes. Five or six steps is the practical ceiling, and four is often clearer.
US counties map questions
Yes. The outline above is a free SVG covering every US county — right-click to save it, print it, or drop it into a document or worksheet. No account needed.
Put your own data on the US counties map
Upload a spreadsheet and publish an interactive map in a couple of minutes — free, no credit card.