The 10 best small towns to live in America right now
Small-town living has been on an upswing for the past few years, whether the draw is lower home prices, top-rated public schools, or simply putting a commute in the rearview mirror. Niche's 2026 Best Places to Live rankings, based on U.S. Department of Education data and millions of resident reviews, give a clearer picture than ever of which small towns actually deliver, and this year's top 10 range from a suburb of just 1,189 residents to one of nearly 19,000, with median home values swinging from the high $400,000s to well over a million and a half dollars.
We used Niche's 2026 Best Places to Live rankings to find the 10 best small towns in the country, filtering to towns and suburbs (excluding cities) and narrowing further to places with a population under 40,000.
10. Swarthmore, Pennsylvania
Population: 6,550
Swarthmore was originally called Westdale, after the painter Benjamin West, until Swarthmore College opened in 1864 and the town renamed itself to match. The college now occupies roughly a third of the borough's land, including the Scott Arboretum, a public garden woven through the campus, and passenger rail service in the 1880s turned the college town into a Philadelphia commuter suburb almost overnight. Swarthmore is Niche's #1 place to live in Delaware County and #5 out of 1,528 statewide, with a median home value of $633,800.
9. Kensington, New York
Population: 1,189
Kensington began in 1904 as a planned enclave built by the Rickert-Finlay Realty Company, complete with entrance gates modeled on London's Kensington Gardens, and incorporated as its own village in 1921 so residents could control zoning directly. It still has a private beach on Manhasset Bay and one of the larger freshwater swimming pools in the country. That exclusivity shows up in the price tag: a median home value of $1,550,500, by far the highest on this list, against Niche's #1 ranking for both livability and family-friendliness in New York.
8. Cinco Ranch, Texas
Population: 18,611
Cinco Ranch takes its name from the five families who ran it as a working cattle ranch and rice farm starting in the 1930s ("cinco" is Spanish for five). A development consortium bought the land in 1984 and built it into a 7,200-acre master-planned community with a golf course, trail network, and eight public schools in the Katy Independent School District. The population has grown by more than double since 2000, and it now holds Niche's #1 spot for both livability and suburbs in Texas.
7. University Heights, Iowa
Population: 1,384
In the early 1920s, brothers Lee and George Koser bet that the University of Iowa would expand west, so they founded University Heights as a separate town before Iowa City could annex the land. They were right: Kinnick Stadium opened in 1929 a short walk away, and by the 1930s Iowa City had swallowed everything around the tiny town except University Heights itself, which incorporated in 1935 and remains its own city to this day. It's now the most densely populated city in Iowa and ranks #1 statewide for livability, families, and retirees alike.
6. Chesterbrook, Pennsylvania
Population: 5,839
A developer bought the 516-acre Chesterbrook farm in 1969 with plans for mixed-income housing, though it took eight years of approvals before construction actually began in the late 1970s. The finished community mixed townhouses and single-family homes around Wilson Farm Park, a 90-acre green space with trails and ballfields slated for a spray park and pickleball courts. Chesterbrook now ranks #4 out of 1,528 Best Places to Live in Pennsylvania and #2 for raising a family statewide.
5. Innsbrook, Virginia
Population: 8,578
Developer Sidney Gunst built Innsbrook starting in 1979 on a rural crossroads once known as Erin Shades, turning it into one of the Richmond region's largest employment centers, with more than seven million square feet of office space and roughly 22,000 workers. Rather than staying strictly commercial, it added around 1,000 residential units, landscaped lakes, and the Innsbrook Pavilion, an outdoor concert venue that's hosted summer shows since the 1980s. It's Niche's #1 suburb to live in anywhere in Virginia.
4. Penn Wynne, Pennsylvania
Population: 6,070
Penn Wynne grew out of the old Greenhill Farms plantation, land first settled by a Welsh Quaker in the 1600s, and took shape as a suburb after its civic association formed in 1928. That association pushed developers toward detached single-family homes instead of denser twin homes, a fight that shaped the low-density, tree-lined character the neighborhood still has today. It's now Niche's #1 place to retire anywhere in Pennsylvania.
3. Devon, Pennsylvania
Population: 1,806
Devon's identity is inseparable from the Devon Horse Show and Country Fair, founded in 1896 and now the oldest and largest outdoor multi-breed horse show in the country. Since 1919, the fair's proceeds have gone to Bryn Mawr Hospital, adding up to more than $15 million in donations over the decades and drawing thousands of volunteers each year. Off the showgrounds, Devon is Niche's #1 place to raise a family and #1 for public schools anywhere in Pennsylvania.
2. Ardmore, Pennsylvania
Population: 13,909
Originally platted as Athensville in 1853, the town was renamed Ardmore in 1873 by the Pennsylvania Railroad, whose Main Line still runs through its center. Ardmore built its reputation as "the Main Street of the Main Line," anchored by Suburban Square, which opened in 1928 as one of the first shopping centers in the country, and by the first suburban branch of a major department store, Strawbridge & Clothier, in 1930. Ardmore is Niche's #1 place to live and #1 suburb anywhere in Pennsylvania today.
1. Clarendon Hills, Illinois
Population: 8,659
Founder Henry Middaugh incorporated Clarendon Hills in the 1920s specifically to keep it from being annexed by neighboring Hinsdale, and had it laid out with curving streets that follow the land's natural contours rather than a standard grid, a design inspired by Frederick Law Olmsted's work in nearby Riverside. That planning legacy earned the town its nickname, "The Volunteer Village." It's the rare town on this list with a claim beyond its own state line: Niche ranks it the #1 best suburb to live in anywhere in America, on top of #1 rankings for livability and families in Illinois specifically.
