County Equivalents Explained: Parishes, Boroughs and Independent Cities

Of the 3,142 entries in the October 2026 edition of the county index, 3,060 have names ending in “County”. The other 82 are county equivalents: areas that stand in for a county in federal statistics and carry a county-level FIPS code, but go by another name. Between them they hold 2,861,133 property records, 2.2% of the national total.

The federal statistical system assigns every piece of land in every state to a county or a county equivalent, so that national counts add up without gaps or overlaps. The states, though, organised local government in different ways, and some never used the word county at all, or used it for only part of their territory. County equivalents are the result. In this edition they appear in 4 states and districts, under 2 different kinds of name. On this site each one has its own page and its own file, priced the same as any county.

Entries in the county index: 3,142
Named “County”: 3,060
County equivalents: 82
Records in county equivalents: 2,861,133

How the index was sorted

The county index records each area’s official name and FIPS code, not its legal type, so this report sorts entries by the ending of the name. The checks run in a fixed order, and the first one that matches decides the group. Matching ignores capital letters.

City and borough: name ends in “City and Borough”
County: name ends in “County”
Parish: name ends in “Parish”
Borough: name ends in “Borough”
Census area: name ends in “Census Area”
Municipality: name begins or ends with “Municipality”
Planning region: name ends in “Planning Region”
District: the District of Columbia
Independent city: name ends in “city” (after the checks above)
Other: anything left over, listed by name

Order matters. “City and Borough” is checked before “Borough” and before “city”, so a consolidated city and borough is not counted twice or misfiled. “County” is checked before “city”, so a county whose name happens to contain the word City, such as one ending in “City County”, is counted as a county. The result describes how areas are named, not a ruling on their legal status, and anything that fits none of the patterns is shown under its own name rather than forced into a group.

Table 1Counties and county equivalents by type, October 2026 edition

Type	Entries	Found in	Records	Share of U.S.	Largest file
Counties	3,060	50 states	128,156,186	97.8%	Los Angeles County, CA
Parishes	64	Louisiana	2,005,949	1.5%	East Baton Rouge Parish, LA
Boroughs	16	Alaska	187,100	0.14%	Matanuska-Susitna Borough, AK
Other names	2	Florida, New Hampshire	668,084	0.51%	Hillsborough, FL

Source: county index. Types are assigned from the ending of each official name, as described above.

The equivalents, one kind at a time

Each group below starts with what the name means, then gives the figures from the index. Every entry links to its own county page, where its record count, FIPS code and rank within its state are listed.

Parishes

Louisiana’s counterpart to a county. The state’s primary local divisions are called parishes, a name carried over from the church parishes of its colonial period, and they take the place of counties in the federal list.

The index holds 64 parishes, all of them in Louisiana. Together they hold 2,005,949 property records, 1.5% of the national total. The largest is East Baton Rouge Parish with 170,525; the smallest is Tensas Parish with 3,323.

List all 64 parishes, largest first

Boroughs

Alaska’s organized boroughs are its regional governments and fill roughly the role a county fills elsewhere. The word means something else in some other states, where a borough is a town-level municipality inside a county and does not appear in the county list at all. New York City’s five boroughs are a third case: each one covers the same ground as a county and is filed under its county name, so none of them is counted in this group.

The index holds 16 boroughs, all of them in Alaska. Together they hold 187,100 property records, 0.14% of the national total. The largest is Matanuska-Susitna Borough with 64,205; the smallest is Bristol Bay Borough with 7.

List all 16 boroughs, largest first

Other names

Names that end in none of the patterns above. They are listed in full so the classification can be checked rather than guessed at.

The index holds 2 entries with other names, spread across 2 states: Florida and New Hampshire. Together they hold 668,084 property records, 0.51% of the national total. The largest is Hillsborough with 520,410; the smallest is Hillsborough with 147,674.

List all 2 entries with other names, largest first

Hillsborough, FL 520,410
Hillsborough, NH 147,674

What this means when buying

A county equivalent is bought exactly like a county: one file, every property record in it, the same $19/mo. The difference shows up at the edges of a market. Where an independent city sits beside or inside a county, the two are separate entries with separate FIPS codes, and covering the whole area takes both files. The same is true anywhere a county equivalent borders a county. The five-county bundle ($49/mo for any 5) treats counties and equivalents alike, so a city and the county around it can sit in one subscription.

Because every row of a county file carries its FIPS code, equivalents also join cleanly with census tables and other government datasets, which use the same codes. For how the equivalents rank against ordinary counties by size, see the largest county property files and the smallest.

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