A recent statewide ranking named the Austin-area suburb Leander as the No. 5 best city in Texas to move to for 2025, and other Austin neighbors made the list as well.
The analysis, conducted by a customer review and news platform called ConsumerAffairs, evaluated the 50 most populated Texas cities across five categories: affordability, safety, economy, health care and education, in addition to overall quality of life, to determine which cities were best to move to. Each city earned a score out of 100 possible points.
Leander stood out, the analysis said, for its safety ranking — No. 1 statewide — and it also secured the No. 2 spot for its booming economy.
However, the city’s rankings were more modest in other areas. The report ranked Leader No. 12 for health care and education, No. 32 for affordability and No. 40 for quality of life.
“Leander’s origin dates back to the 1880s, when a rail line was constructed to connect Austin to Abilene,” the report said. “Nowhere among Texas’ largest cities is violent crime less common, and over the past five years, no metro area has experienced faster job growth.”
The suburb, which has a population of around 78,000, was also ranked as one of the top ten places to live by U.S. News and World Reports for 2025-2026.
See list of best cities to move to in Texas
The top four cities on the ConsumerAffairs list were all in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, followed by Leander and then Round Rock at No. 9.