Canada Cities Database

We're proud to offer a simple, accurate and up-to-date database of Canadian cities and towns. We've built it from the ground up using authoritative sources such as Statistics Canada*, the US National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and NASA.

  • Up-to-date: Data updated as of August 27, 2023.
  • Comprehensive: Over 8,016 cities and towns from all provinces and territories in Canada.
  • Useful fields: From latitude and longitude to age, education and income.
  • Accurate: Aggregated and cleaned from official sources.
  • Simple: A single CSV file, concise field names, only one entry per city/town.

Databases

BasicProComprehensive
Commercial useAllowedAllowedAllowed
File formatCSV, ExcelCSV, Excel, SQLCSV, Excel, SQL
Places with more than 1,000 peopleYesYesYes
All places regardless of populationNoYesYes
Number of entries1,7378,0168,016
Fields (listed below)Basic fieldsMore fieldsAll fields
Future updatesNot guaranteedIncluded for 12 monthsIncluded for 24 months
AttributionRequiredNot requiredNot required
LicenseCreative Commons Attribution 4.0Permissive, no redistributionPermissive, no redistribution
Refund policyN/A30-day guarantee30-day guarantee
One-time feeFree$99 (USD)$199 (USD)
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Visualization

Here is a visualization of the data in the paid versions of database.

Sample Preview

Here is a sample of rows from the database with some commonly-used fields:

*income_household_median (shortened for space)


All Fields

(scroll down to see all fields)

fieldname description Basic Pro Comp.
city The name of the city/town.
city_ascii city as an ASCII string.
city_alt Alternative names of the city/town. (e.g. Saint John's) delimited by |.
lat The latitude of the city/town.
lng The longitude of the city/town.
province_id The province or territory's postal abbreviation.
province_name The name of the province or territory that contains the city/town.
population An estimate of the city's urban population (2021 Census).
population_proper An estimate of the city's municipal population (2021 Census).
density The estimated population per square kilometer.
timezone The city's time zone in the tz database format. (e.g. America/Toronto)
postal All three-character forward sortation areas (FSA) in the city/town, delimited by a space (e.g. P0H P1B P2B.) Learn more.
ranking An integer from 1-5 that captures the importance of a city (1 is most important, 5 least important).
id A 10-digit unique id generated by SimpleMaps. It is consistent across releases and databases (e.g. World Cities Database).
age_median The median age of residents in the city.
male The percentage of residents who report being male (e.g. 55.1).
female The percentage of residents who report being female (e.g. 44.9).
married The percentage of residents who report being married (e.g. 60.0).
family_size The average size of resident families (e.g. 3.22).
income_household_median Median household income in CAD.
home_ownership Percentage of households that own (rather than rent) their residence.
home_value The median value of homes that are owned by residents as of 2021.
rent_median The median rent paid by renters as of 2021.
education_bachelors The percentage of residents with a bachelor's degree.
labor_force_participation The percentage of residents who are 15 years and over that are employed or actively seeking employment.
unemployment_rate The percentage of residents unemployed as of 2021.
race_white The percentage of residents who report their race White.
race_black The percentage of residents that identify as Black.
race_asian The percentage of residents who report their race as Asian.
race_native The percentage of residents who identify as Native.
race_latino The percentage of residents that identify as Latino
race_other The percentage of residents that identify as another race.
age_under_10 The percentage of residents aged 0-9.
age_10_to_19 The percentage of residents aged 10-19.
age_20s The percentage of residents aged 20-29.
age_30s The percentage of residents aged 30-39.
age_40s The percentage of residents aged 40-49.
age_50s The percentage of residents aged 50-59.
age_60s The percentage of residents aged 60-69.
age_70s The percentage of residents aged 70-79.
age_over_80 The percentage of residents aged over 80.
divorced The percentage of residents divorced.
never_married The percentage of residents never married.
widowed The percentage of residents who are widowed.
income_household_under_10 The percentage of households with income under 10,000 CAD.
income_household_10_to_20 The percentage of households with income from 10,000-20,000 CAD.
income_household_20_to_30 The percentage of households with income from 20,000-30,000 CAD.
income_household_30_to_40 The percentage of households with income from 30,000-40,000 CAD.
income_household_40_to_50 The percentage of households with income from 40,000-50,000 CAD.
income_household_60_to_70 The percentage of households with income from 60,000-70,000 CAD.
income_household_70_to_80 The percentage of households with income from 70,000-80,000 CAD.
income_household_80_to_90 The percentage of households with income from 80,000-90,000 CAD.
income_household_90_to_100 The percentage of households with income from 90,000-100,000 CAD.
income_household_100_to_150 The percentage of households with income from 100,000-150,000 CAD.
income_household_150_to_200 The percentage of households with income from 150,000-200,000 CAD.
income_household_200_over The percentage of households with income over 200,000 CAD.
income_individual_median The median income of individuals in the city/town in CAD.
rent_burden_30_percent Percentage of renting households spending 30% or more of their income on rent.
education_less_highschool The percentage of residents with less than a high school education.
education_highschool The percentage of residents with a high school diploma or equivalent certificate, but no more.
education_trade The percentage of residents with an apprenticeship or trades certificate or diploma, but no more.
education_some_college The percentage of residents with a college, CEGEP or other non-university education or an university education below bachelor level, but no more.
education_bachelors The percentage of residents with a bachelor's degree (or equivalent) but no more.
education_graduate The percentage of residents with a degree above bachelor level, a degree in medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine or optometry, a master's degree, or a doctorate.
education_stem_degree The percentage of residents who are 15 years and over with a major field of study in Physical and life sciences and technologies, Mathematics, computer and information sciences and Architecture, engineering, and related trades.
poverty The percentage of residents who are in low income based on the low-income measure, after tax (LIM-AT).
commute_time Average commute time in minutes (roughly estimated by averaging bucket responses).
language_english The percentage of residents who can speak English.
language_french The percentage of residents who can speak French.
language_other The percentage of residents who can speak another language.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Basic (free) version sufficient for my needs?

The Basic (free) database will meet many user's needs. You may want to purchase the Pro or Comprehensive versions if:

  • You need data for rural towns/villages or places that have fewer than 1,000 residents.
  • You need demographic data such as age, race, education or income.
  • You don't want to (or can't) attribute your use of our data on a public-facing website.

Do you omit any populated places?

Yes. For clarity we don't show multiple places with the same name in the same province/territory. We only show the most important place of a given name in each province/territory. Also, we omit some rural places that are particularly insignificant.

Am I allowed to redistribute the database if I purchase a paid license?

No. You are not allowed to sell the database or make it publicly available. However, you can make copies and backups of the data. You are also allowed to query the database to power publicly facing applications such as a store locator. To learn more, read the full license terms.

How often do you release updates?

It depends, we monitor our sources and release new versions when we have more current data. Upon purchase, you can elect to receive email alerts when we release new versions of the database.

Why should I trust this data?

This database was aggregated from authoritative sources and carefully processed by SimpleMaps. We've been developing and selling interactive maps to Fortune 500 companies and prominent international organizations for over 14 years. Over this time, we've learned a lot about geographic data. To get a sense of the expertise and support we offer, check out some of the testimonials from our happy customers.

If I use the free database, what type of attribution is required?

If you use the Basic (free) database, you must link back to this page:
https://simplemaps.com/data/canada-cities
from a public webpage where you are using the data. If you want to use the data internally, you must link back to this page from your firm's website on a page that can be easily found though links on the root domain. The link must be clearly visible to the human eye.

How recent are the demographic variables such as income_household_median?

All of the demographic variables come from Statistics Canada and are from 2021 Census (the most recent data available).

Does the database contain postal codes?

postal captures the three-character Forward sortation area (FSA) that are within or overlap the city. It corresponds to the first half of a six-character Canadian postal code. You can learn more at Wikipedia. Since there are nearly a million six-character postal codes in Canada, it is neither easy nor practical to incorporate six-character postal codes into our database.

How come some demographic variables are blank (empty strings) for some cities?

Demographic variables are only available for places recognized and tracked by Statistics Canada.

How do I calculate the distance between two cities?

We've published free formulas in popular programming languages. Check them out.

Does the database include commonly known populated places even if they don't have a legal/municipal existence?

Yes, such places are included in our paid databases.

Does the database contain neighborhoods?

No, the database does not typically contained named places that are within other listed towns/cities. There are some exceptions to this in large metropolitan areas like Vancouver and Toronto where important cities lie within larger cities and share municipal services.


*This database contains information from Statistics Canada licensed under the Open Government License – Canada. This does not imply that Statistics Canada endorses our product.

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