In Plano, life is pretty great, according to a new ranking.
The Dallas suburb was ranked fifth in Livability’s 2026 list of the top 100 places to live in the U.S. Huntsville, Alabama took the top spot, while three other Texas cities made the top 10: Sugar Land at No. 3, Round Rock at No. 9 and New Braunfels at No. 10.
“This North Texas spot is known for its top-rated schools, safe neighborhoods and abundant parks, delivering big opportunity with a high quality of life,” the website says.
Livability is a curator of online relocation resources that aims to highlight “the unsung awesomeness of America’s small to mid-sized cities,” according to its website. As part of that, it releases an annual ranking of the best places to live, and encourages readers to filter the list according to their own criteria to find their ideal hometown.
The list’s methodology involves scoring more than 2,000 cities across a vast array of data points that fall into eight broad categories: economy, housing and cost of living, amenities, transportation, environment, safety, education and health. In the 2026 ranking, Livability said it gave particular weight to housing and cost of living because of economic pressures facing many Americans.
There are some limits, though. While life seems grand in Highland Park, you won’t find it on the list. It only features cities between 75,000 and 500,000 residents, and excludes cities with median home values over $500,000, in service of showcasing “attainable” places to live.
In total, nine Texas cities made the cut of 100, including nearby Arlington and Tyler.