The Fastest-Growing Counties in Texas, 2024 to 2025

Texas added more people than any other state again last year. Between July 2024 and July 2025 the state grew by an estimated 391,243 residents, from 31,318,578 to 31,709,821, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's Vintage 2025 population estimates. But that growth is not spread evenly. It is concentrated almost entirely in the suburban and exurban counties ringing the big four metros, and the two ways of measuring it, raw numbers and percentage, tell slightly different stories about where Texas is booming fastest.

Fastest-growing Texas counties by number of new residents

By sheer headcount, the growth follows the giant metros. These are the counties that added the most people in a single year.

Harris County, home to Houston, added the most people of any county in Texas, nearly 49,000. But notice its growth rate: less than 1 percent. The urban core is still adding residents in raw terms while barely moving in percentage terms, because it is starting from a base of 5 million. The real engines are the collar counties. Collin and Denton north of Dallas, Montgomery and Fort Bend around Houston, and Williamson outside Austin are where the subdivisions are going up.

Fastest-growing Texas counties by percentage

Switch to percentage growth and the smaller exurbs jump to the front. To keep the list meaningful, this table is limited to counties with at least 20,000 residents, since a county of a few hundred people can post a huge percentage on a handful of movers. Even the top of this ranking, Loving County, went from 47 people to 52, a 10.6 percent gain that reflects five individuals, which is exactly why the floor matters.

Kaufman County is the standout

One county lands near the top of both lists. Kaufman County, on the southeastern edge of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, added 11,225 people, enough to crack the top ten for raw growth, while also growing 5.67 percent, second-fastest in the state among sizable counties. That combination, big absolute gains and a high rate, is the signature of a county in the middle of transforming from rural to suburban. Forney and the towns along U.S. 80 are absorbing the Dallas overflow at full speed.

The rest of the percentage list reads like a map of the four metro fringes. Around Houston: Waller, Liberty, and Montgomery. Around Dallas-Fort Worth: Kaufman, Ellis, Hunt, and Collin. Along the Austin-San Antonio corridor: Caldwell, Comal, and Hays. The pattern is the same everywhere: growth is leapfrogging past the built-out core counties into the next ring out, where land is still cheap enough to build.

The bigger Texas picture

This one-year snapshot is the latest frame in a long movie. Texas has been the country's population growth leader for years, a story we traced in how Texas's population has changed since 1990 and in the metro race in how Houston overtook Dallas as the fastest-growing metro. For the full ordering of every county in the country, see the fastest-growing counties ranking, or explore Texas's own data profile and compare any two counties with the compare tool.

Sources

Population figures are the July 1, 2024 and July 1, 2025 estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates Program, Vintage 2025 county totals. Both years are drawn from the same vintage so the year-over-year change is measured on a consistent basis. The percentage ranking is limited to counties with at least 20,000 residents to avoid the volatility of very small counties.