Research in minutes, not hours

Every figure comes from the agency that publishes it, Census, BLS, NOAA, FBI, HUD, CFPB, CDC, CMS, NCES and others, and is verified through a rigorous process that checks totals against that agency's own published releases before anything goes live. If a number does not reconcile, we don't publish it. Survey-based sources carry sampling error and are weighted accordingly; suppressed or unpublished cells show as no data, never as zero. We are an independent product and are not affiliated with or endorsed by any of these agencies.

A single place to map, cross-tabulate and export U.S. public statistics without writing code. It began as an interface for Census ACS PUMS microdata — the richest population dataset published in the U.S. and one of the hardest to use — and now covers 39 datasets from about a dozen federal and state agencies, all through the same controls. Pick a place, pick what you want to measure, read the answer. No GIS, no statistics package, no survey-weighting expertise.

Mappable in the explorer: ACS PUMS, Building Permits, Population, GDP, Commuting Flows, Presidential Elections, U.S. Senate Elections, U.S. House Elections, Education (K-12), Fair Market Rents, Housing Market, Jobs by State & Metro, Unemployment, Arrests (FBI), Arson (FBI), Reported Offenses, Crime Trends, Business Patterns, Mortgage Delinquency, Medicare, County Health, Neighborhoods (ACS), Mortgage Lending (HMDA), Climate, Public Companies, State Legislative Elections, Voter Registration, Prison & Jail Populations, Hospital Finances, American Housing Survey. Published as dedicated pages and charts: CPI inflation, BLS employment (CES), Consumer Expenditure microdata, the American Time Use Survey, CFPB consumer credit trends, FBI hate crime and officer-assault (LEOKA) statistics, and WARN layoff notices from state workforce agencies. That spans demographics, income, housing, building permits, jobs and unemployment, consumer prices, crime, health, education, mortgage lending, climate and elections. The complete statistic-by-statistic list — currently 544 statistics — is at pumsdata.com/library, and new sources are added most months.

PUMS — the Public Use Microdata Sample — is published by the U.S. Census Bureau from the American Community Survey. It is a de-identified, record-level sample of people and housing units, weighted to represent the whole population. Because it is record-level rather than pre-aggregated, you can cross-tabulate any combination of characteristics instead of being limited to the tables the Bureau chose to publish. It remains the dataset pumsdata was built for, and the one the guided query builder is designed around.

data.census.gov and IPUMS are authoritative and free, and we check our own numbers against the agencies' published figures — but both hand you either pre-aggregated tables or an extract you then analyse in R, SAS or Stata. Aggregators like Statista are broad but are not built on U.S. microdata and rarely go below state level. pumsdata's difference is the combination: agency-grade data, sub-state geography, and an interface a non-technical person can drive in about two minutes, on a published month-to-month price instead of a sales call.

It varies by dataset, and each one states its own coverage in the app. The deepest is NOAA climate, monthly from 1895; presidential elections run from 1976; CPI inflation from 1997; ACS PUMS is the current 1-year vintage (2024) plus prior years for comparison. Geographies include all 50 states and DC, counties, metro areas, cities and places, PUMAs, census tracts, ZIP-code areas and school districts, depending on what the source publishes.

Free is a proper look at the data rather than a trial: 5 queries a month across every dataset, answers shown 5 rows at a time, no card and no expiry — but no exports. Pro ($49.99/mo billed annually, or $79.99 month-to-month, cancel anytime) makes queries unlimited, shows every row, and adds every prior year, copy and paste, and 10 exports a month of up to 100 rows each. Unlimited ($149.99/mo annually, $174.99 monthly) removes the export limits entirely. And for one-off work there is the $45 Usage Pass: 24 hours of unlimited queries with 5 exports, no subscription.

Exports are what the paid plans are for. Free lets you map and cross-tabulate but not download. Pro includes 10 exports a month of up to 100 rows each; a $45 Usage Pass includes 5; Unlimited is unrestricted, up to the 1,048,576 rows a spreadsheet can actually address. Any view can be taken as CSV or Excel, and maps and charts can be saved as images, for use in your own analysis, reports, or articles. CSV, Excel and images all draw from the same allowance.

No. The microdata sources are de-identified by the agencies that publish them and cannot identify individuals; attempting to re-identify anyone is prohibited. Aggregate sources are published at area level only. We also never sell your account data — see our Privacy Policy.