8 Major Metro ZIP Codes Ranked by FBI Crime Score (2026)
By Sharon Ben-Moshe · July 13, 2026
San Diego's top ZIP code outranks seven other major metros on FBI crime data. See how eight U.S. cities compare on safety, and why some ZIP codes end up sharing identical crime scores despite very different neighborhoods.
According to the FBI Crime Data Explorer, the highest-scoring ZIP code among eight major U.S. metros compared here is San Diego's 92130, which posts a crime score of 65 out of 100 on NeighborScore's index — well ahead of the 25/100 floor shared by several Sun Belt metros. Here's how these metro ZIP codes compare when ranked strictly by FBI crime data, and why some cities post identical scores even though their neighborhoods look very different on the ground. This comparison uses the single highest-scoring ZIP code from each metro so the ranking reflects each city's ceiling, not its average.
How NeighborScore's Crime Score Works
NeighborScore's composite index weights crime at 53% and school quality at 47% of the overall score; home value is shown separately as affordability context but is not weighted into the composite. The crime component itself follows a four-tier cascade, using the highest-resolution FBI data available for a given ZIP code. ZIP-level incident data is used where it exists — currently for Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and San Francisco, sourced from each city's open-data portal. Everywhere else, the score falls back to city or municipality-level FBI Uniform Crime Reporting data, then county-level FBI data, then a state-wide average as a last resort.
This matters for reading the table below correctly: every ZIP code still receives a 0-100 crime score, but the underlying data resolution differs by location according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program. A score of 45 in one metro and 45 in another may reflect two different tiers of the same national dataset.
Which Metro Has the Safest Top ZIP Code?
Ranking the single highest-scoring ZIP code from each of five metros, by crime score first and overall NeighborScore second:
- 92130, San Diego, CA — crime score 65/100, overall score 76/100
- 15238, Pittsburgh, PA — crime score 45/100, overall score 66/100
- 95129, San Jose, CA — crime score 45/100, overall score 66/100
- 89144, Las Vegas, NV — crime score 45/100, overall score 60/100
- 78759, Austin, TX — crime score 25/100, overall score 54/100
San Diego's lead comes from a lower FBI-reported violent crime rate relative to population in San Diego County compared with the other counties in this sample. Pittsburgh, San Jose, and Las Vegas cluster in a middle tier at 45 out of 100, separated from each other mainly by school score and home value rather than by safety. Austin represents the most common baseline score of 25 out of 100 in this dataset — a tier also shared by Houston, San Antonio, and Indianapolis ZIP codes, none of which currently have city-level FBI agency data mapped in NeighborScore's system.
Why Do Some Cities Share the Exact Same Crime Score?
Outside the handful of pilot cities with ZIP-level incident data, NeighborScore's crime score is typically assigned at the county or metro-wide level, since FBI crime reporting is submitted by police agency rather than by ZIP code. That means every ZIP code inside a single county can share an identical crime score until agency-level data becomes available for that jurisdiction. Austin's 25/100 baseline, for example, currently applies uniformly across the metro's ZIP codes, even though home values and school scores vary considerably from one neighborhood to the next.
This is also why the ranking above compares metros rather than individual neighborhoods within a single city: crime data resolution genuinely differs by location, and NeighborScore's scoring methodology is transparent about which tier produced each number rather than presenting false precision. As more cities publish agency-level or incident-level crime data, more ZIP codes will move off the county-wide baseline and onto more granular scores that better reflect block-by-block differences.
Bottom Line
Among the eight metros compared, San Diego's ZIP 92130 currently holds the highest FBI-sourced crime score at 65/100, with Pittsburgh's ZIP 15238, San Jose's ZIP 95129, and Las Vegas's ZIP 89144 clustered at 45/100. Austin's ZIP 78759 and similar Sun Belt ZIP codes sit at the 25/100 baseline tier shared across their home counties. Full crime, school, and home-value breakdowns for each ZIP code are available on their individual NeighborScore profiles, and readers comparing a move between any of these metros should weigh the school and value components alongside crime, since those two factors currently do more to separate these ZIP codes than safety alone. More city-level rankings are posted regularly on the NeighborScore blog.