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.
Databases | Basic | Pro | Comprehensive |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commercial use | Allowed | Allowed | Allowed |
| File format | CSV, Excel | CSV, Excel, SQL | CSV, Excel, SQL |
| Places with more than 1,000 people | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| All places regardless of population | No | Yes | Yes |
| Number of entries | 1,737 | 8,016 | 8,016 |
| Fields (listed below) | Basic fields | More fields | All fields |
| Future updates | Not guaranteed | Included for 12 months | Included for 24 months |
| Attribution | Required | Not required | Not required |
| License | Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 | Permissive, no redistribution | Permissive, no redistribution |
| Refund policy | N/A | 30-day guarantee | 30-day guarantee |
| One-time fee | Free | $99 (USD) | $199 (USD) |
| Buy Now! | Buy Now! |
Here is a visualization of the data in the paid versions of database.
Here is a sample of rows from the database with some commonly-used fields:
*income_household_median (shortened for space)
(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. |
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:
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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