The largest cities of Germany: urban units, municipalities and metro areas
Germany counted three ways: by continuous built-up area, by municipality and by metro area. 71 urban units pass 100,000 people; the largest is Berlin, with 3,756,874. The city of Berlin has 3,426,354 people within its limits; its urban unit, 3,756,874; its metro area, 4,582,100.
How Germany counts its cities
Germany publishes no urban units. SlightlyMap computes them from the Global Human Settlement Layer with the same 200 m rule as INSEE; a continuous conurbation is split only around dense cores of at least 200,000 people. The Ruhr, an almost continuous built-up area from Duisburg to Dortmund, makes Essen the second largest unit, close behind Berlin.
The 25 largest urban units
Source: SlightlyMap, from GHSL, 200 m rule on the built-up surface at 100 m, 2025 population.
| # | Urban unit | People | Area (km²) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Berlin | 3,756,874 | 742 |
| 2 | Essen | 3,500,210 | 1,018 |
| 3 | Hamburg | 2,090,147 | 609 |
| 4 | Munich | 1,861,604 | 299 |
| 5 | Wuppertal | 1,621,418 | 466 |
| 6 | Frankfurt am Main | 1,082,529 | 207 |
| 7 | Stuttgart | 1,050,570 | 242 |
| 8 | Bremen | 772,176 | 306 |
| 9 | Hannover | 715,204 | 203 |
| 10 | Nuremberg | 714,385 | 179 |
| 11 | Düsseldorf | 693,762 | 142 |
| 12 | Dresden | 690,558 | 227 |
| 13 | Köln | 655,590 | 120 |
| 14 | Leipzig | 651,680 | 193 |
| 15 | Bielefeld | 647,998 | 317 |
| 16 | Mannheim | 619,728 | 167 |
| 17 | Wiesbaden | 549,586 | 140 |
| 18 | Bonn | 527,469 | 157 |
| 19 | Krefeld | 512,240 | 162 |
| 20 | Hagen | 392,839 | 140 |
| 21 | Augsburg | 375,912 | 106 |
| 22 | Saarbrücken | 331,299 | 147 |
| 23 | Karlsruhe | 305,624 | 78 |
| 24 | Münster | 297,614 | 75 |
| 25 | Neuss | 296,917 | 84 |
The 10 largest municipalities and metro areas
| # | Municipality | People | Metro area | People |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Berlin | 3,426,354 | Essen | 6,124,912 |
| 2 | Hamburg | 1,973,896 | Berlin | 4,582,100 |
| 3 | Munich | 1,505,005 | Köln | 3,377,503 |
| 4 | Köln | 1,024,621 | Frankfurt am Main | 3,177,893 |
| 5 | Frankfurt am Main | 650,000 | Hamburg | 2,756,783 |
| 6 | Düsseldorf | 618,685 | Munich | 2,677,802 |
| 7 | Stuttgart | 612,663 | Stuttgart | 2,296,023 |
| 8 | Essen | 593,085 | Mannheim | 1,760,726 |
| 9 | Dortmund | 588,462 | Nuremberg | 1,321,178 |
| 10 | Dresden | 564,904 | Hannover | 1,148,513 |
Municipalities: GeoNames, latest census or estimate. Metro areas: GHSL functional urban areas. Metro areas are named after their main municipality, which is not always the best-known name of the area.
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