Editorial policy

Independence

City Zip Compare is an independent publication. We are not affiliated with the U.S. Census Bureau or any government agency. Editorial decisions — what to publish, how to frame data, which comparisons to draw — are made independently of advertisers. Display advertising never influences which numbers we surface or how we describe them.

Sourcing

Every demographic, income, housing, education and employment figure on this site comes from a primary government source. The bulk of our data is pulled directly from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey 5-year estimates (ACS5) via the official Census Data API, with the Decennial Census, Bureau of Labor Statistics, IRS Statistics of Income, and FBI Uniform Crime Reporting program used as supplementary sources where relevant.

We do not republish scraped data, third-party "estimates," or numbers from real-estate marketing pages. If a figure appears on a place page, it can be reproduced by anyone querying the same Census table for the same geography and vintage.

Fact-checking

Article copy is grounded in the same Census tables used for our place pages. Specific tables (B01003, B19013, B25077, B25064, B25003, B23025, B15003, B08303 and others) are cited inline and on our data sources page. National benchmarks used for comparative phrasing ("above the U.S. median") come from the most recent ACS5 release.

Update cadence

• Census ACS5 data refreshes annually, usually in December. We pull the new vintage within two weeks of release.
• Place pages cache for up to seven days and refetch in the background.
• Editorial articles are reviewed at least annually; the "last updated" date on each article reflects the most recent substantive review.

Corrections

We correct factual errors promptly. If a number on the site disagrees with the underlying Census table, that is a bug — please report it via our contact page. Corrections that materially change a published article will be noted at the bottom of the affected piece with the date and nature of the change.

AI disclosure

Our place-page narratives are generated programmatically from real Census variables using a deterministic template engine — not a large language model. Long-form editorial articles are written and reviewed by humans on our editorial team. We do not publish unreviewed AI-generated articles.

Conflicts of interest

City Zip Compare earns revenue from display advertising and, in the future, affiliate relationships with mortgage, moving and insurance partners. Affiliate links — when present — are disclosed inline. No partner has editorial review of our content.