Texas added over 470,000 new residents last year alone, and many of them had one question before anything else: where is the safest place to live in Texas? Fair enough. The state stretches across 268,000 square miles, holds 30+ million people, and crime rates look completely different depending on which zip code you land in.

We dug into FBI Uniform Crime Report data, compared it against local police stats, and factored in things like school ratings, population growth, and housing affordability to put together our ranking of the safest cities in Texas for 2026. One city kept rising to the top – and it happens to be sitting in a real estate market that actually favors buyers right now.

How We Measured Safety

Crime numbers alone don’t tell you much. If a city of 80,000 reports 200 property crimes, that is a very different story than a town of 8,000 reporting the same count. So every city here was scored on violent crime per 1,000 residents, property crime per 1,000 residents, whether crime trended up or down year over year, and broader livability signals – median household income, how well schools perform, how fast emergency services respond.

We also set a population floor of 10,000. Without that cutoff, a single bad incident in a tiny unincorporated community throws the whole list off.

Top 10 Safest Cities in Texas for 2026

1. Georgetown – Violent crime runs 68% below the national average here, and property crime has fallen three years straight. Georgetown took the top spot, and it was not close.
2. Flower Mound – Sits north of Dallas with schools that consistently outperform the region. Violent crime barely shows up in the data. Many out-of-state families end up here, and it is easy to see why.
3. Cedar Park – Northwest of Austin, close enough to commute but far enough to feel suburban. Crime rates are some of the lowest you will find anywhere in the state.
4. Pflugerville – Growth has been aggressive, but the crime spikes that usually tag along with rapid expansion never showed up here. That is rare.
5. Murphy – Collin County has a habit of producing safe cities. Murphy is the latest. Small population, but the city punches well above its weight on infrastructure.
6. Friendswood – Sitting between Houston and Galveston, this one gives you Gulf Coast proximity with crime stats that look like a gated community.
7. Wylie – Northeast of Dallas, Wylie has built itself into one of the best small towns in Texas to raise a family without most people noticing. Crime is low, schools are funded, and housing has not priced out younger buyers yet.
8. League City – The biggest city on this list by headcount, and proof that a growing population does not have to mean growing crime.
9. Allen – Spends more per capita on public safety than almost any city in Texas. You can see it in every metric.
10. Fulshear – Population has roughly doubled in five years, making it one of the fastest-growing cities in Texas. Crime numbers barely moved during that stretch, which is hard to pull off.

Georgetown, TX: Why the Safest City Is Also a Buyer’s Market

Georgetown has been getting attention for much more than safety lately. This Williamson County city sits about 30 miles north of downtown Austin, and over the past few years, it has quietly become one of the best places to live in Texas.

Look at the crime data: roughly 1.2 violent incidents per 1,000 residents versus 3.7 nationally. Property crime keeps dropping year after year since 2022. Police staffing outpaces state benchmarks, and average response times stay under six minutes.

What really sets Georgetown apart from everywhere else on this list, though, is the housing situation.

Austin’s median home price still hovers around $550,000. Georgetown has new construction starting in the mid-$300s. You have got Sun City Georgetown – a 55+ active adult community with two golf courses and around 5,500 homes – and Wolf Ranch, a mixed-use neighborhood zoned into top-rated Williamson County schools. Whether you are 35 or 65, there is something here that fits.

Georgetown, TX schools punch above their weight across the board – reading, math, college readiness. Georgetown ISD posts a graduation rate north of 95%, and multiple campuses carry TEA distinction designations.

Retirees looking at the best places to retire in Texas should have Georgetown near the top of their list. Healthcare access through Baylor Scott & White and St. David’s is solid, the downtown square is walkable and well-kept, and a fixed income goes meaningfully further here than in Austin, San Antonio, or Dallas.

On the buyer side specifically, 2026 inventory in Georgetown has climbed 22% over 2024 levels. Sellers are coming to the table. Builders are throwing in incentives. If you have been sitting on the fence, this is the window.

Families already making the jump have found that local movers in Georgetown, TX are keeping up with the pace – and the transition itself has become smoother as the city’s infrastructure catches up with demand. New roads, expanded utilities, and retail development along the I-35 corridor have made settling in faster and less stressful than even two years ago.

Best Places to Live in Texas for Families

Safety gets you on the shortlist, but families are weighing a dozen other things too – school quality, parks, youth sports, pediatric care, whether you can actually walk to anything from your front door.

Georgetown, Cedar Park, and Flower Mound score well on nearly all of those. All three have organized youth leagues, well-funded libraries, and neighborhoods that were planned around families rather than retrofitted for them.

Black families evaluating the safest cities in Texas should take a hard look at Pflugerville and League City. Both have genuinely diverse populations, active cultural programming, and school districts with strong equity track records.

If you are moving to Texas from California or another high-cost state, the Austin metro corridor tends to be the landing zone. No state income tax, affordable places to live compared to what you left, and a job market that keeps pulling in employers – that combination makes Georgetown and Cedar Park especially practical for people recalibrating their cost of living. 

For anyone making that kind of cross-country move, booking long distance movers to Georgetown, TX early tends to save both money and headaches, since the best crews fill up fast during peak season. 

Is Texas a Safe Place to Live?

Short answer: yes, but where you land changes everything. Texas has cities on this list that stack up against anywhere in the country, and it also has neighborhoods where crime rates blow past the national average. You cannot paint the whole state with one brush.

The pattern worth paying attention to is this: mid-size suburban cities along the I-35 corridor and north of Dallas are quietly building some of the safest, most livable communities in the country. Georgetown leads that wave in 2026, and with a housing market that has finally tilted toward buyers, the math works better now than it has in years.

Start with the data, narrow your list, then spend a weekend in the places that make the cut. Rankings only get you so far. The rest you figure out by walking the neighborhoods yourself.