Are you looking for love in Iowa?
Or are you just hoping to hook up with a hot Iowan?
Either way, we’ve got you covered here.
If you live in Iowa, there’s a pretty good chance there are a lot of singles in your area. The Hawkeye State has plenty of people over 18 who aren’t married or in a serious relationship.
That’s great news for people who are single and looking to mingle.
So, where are the best cities for singles in Iowa? We used Saturday Night Science to find out.
34.6 median age · 21.0% married households
Located in
Warren County, Iowa
Des Moines is the capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Iowa. It is also the county seat of Polk County. A small part of the city extends into Warren County. It was incorporated on September 22, 1851, as Fort Des Moines, which was shortened to “Des Moines” in 1857. It is on and named after the Des Moines River, which likely was adapted from the French colonial name, Rivire des Moines, meaning “River of the Monks”. The city’s population was 203,433 as of the 2010 census. The five-county metropolitan area is ranked 89th in terms of population in the United States with 634,725 residents according to the 2016 estimate by the United States Census Bureau.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
23.3 median age · 13.0% married households
Located in
Story County, Iowa
Ames is a city located in the central part of Story County, Iowa, United States. It is located approximately 30 miles north of Des Moines, and had a 2010 population of 58,965. The U.S. Census Bureau designates the Ames metropolitan statistical area as encompassing all of Story County; combined with the Boone, Iowa micropolitan statistical area, the pair make up the larger Ames-Boone combined statistical area. While Ames is the largest city in Story County, the county seat is in the nearby city of Nevada 8 miles east of Ames.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
37.5 median age · 22.0% married households
Located in
Scott County, Iowa
Davenport is the county seat of Scott County in Iowa and is located along the Mississippi River on the eastern border of the state. It is the largest of the Quad Cities, a metropolitan area with a population estimate of 382,630 and a CSA population of 474,226; it is the 90th largest CSA in the nation. Davenport was founded on May 14, 1836 by Antoine Le Claire and was named for his friend, George Davenport, a colonel who was stationed at nearby Fort Armstrong during the Black Hawk War. According to the 2010 census, the city had a population of 99,685. The city appealed this figure, arguing that the Census Bureau missed a section of residents, and that its total population was more than 100,000. The Census Bureau estimated Davenport’s 2011 population to be 100,802.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
30.9 median age · 17.0% married households
Located in
Buena Vista County, Iowa
Storm Lake is a city in Buena Vista County, Iowa, United States. The population was 10,600 in the 2010 census, an increase from 10,076 in the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Buena Vista County. Storm Lake is home to Buena Vista University, originally Buena Vista College. Tyson Foods operates a large hog slaughterhouse, meat packing plant, and turkey processing plant in Storm Lake.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
37.3 median age · 28.0% married households
Located in
Linn County, Iowa
Cedar Rapids is the second largest city in Iowa and is the county seat of Linn County. The city lies on both banks of the Cedar River, 20 miles north of Iowa City and 100 miles northeast of Des Moines, the state’s capital and largest city. It is a part of the Cedar Rapids/Iowa City Corridor of Linn, Benton, Cedar, Jones, Johnson, and Washington counties. Until massive flooding in 2008, the city’s government was headquartered in the Veterans Memorial Building, near the Linn County Courthouse and jail on Mays Island in the Cedar River; Cedar Rapids was one of a few cities in the world, along with Paris, France, with governmental offices on a municipal island.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
38.1 median age · 30.0% married households
Located in
Dubuque County, Iowa
Dubuque is the county seat of Dubuque County, Iowa, United States, located along the Mississippi River. In 2013, its population was 58,253, making it the tenth-largest city in the state.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
34.0 median age · 21.0% married households
Located in
Johnson County, Iowa
Coralville is a city in Johnson County, Iowa, United States. It is a suburb of Iowa City and part of the Iowa City Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 18,907 at the 2010 census.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
36.0 median age · 24.0% married households
Located in
Warren County, Iowa
West Des Moines is a city in Polk, Dallas, and Warren counties in the US state of Iowa. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 56,609. West Des Moines is the second-largest city in the Des Moines metropolitan area and the tenth-largest city in Iowa. It ranked 94th in Money magazine’s list of the “100 Best Places to Live and Launch” in 2008, 77th and 57th on the 100 Best Places to Live in 2014 and 2015, respectively, and 18th on the Hipster Cities of 2015.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
29.3 median age · 30.0% married households
Located in
Black Hawk County, Iowa
Cedar Falls is a city in Black Hawk County, Iowa, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 39,260 and has the smaller population of the two principal cities in the Waterloo-Cedar Falls metropolitan area. It is home to the University of Northern Iowa, a public university.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
31.7 median age · 26.0% married households
Located in
Johnson County, Iowa
North Liberty is a city in Johnson County, Iowa, United States. It is a suburb of Iowa City and part of the Iowa City Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
The receipts
Compare the top ten
Pick a metric. The bars rescale. The red line is Iowa’s statewide median.
On the map
Where Iowa’s singles cluster
Saturday Night Science
Methodology: How do you determine which city is best for singles in Iowa anyways?
To give you the places in Iowa which are best for singles to find one another, we used Saturday Night Science to look at a handful of metrics. Of course, we want to measure the type of people who live in each city and make some assumptions about what single people like.
So we researched the internet for a database that contains all that information.
We threw a lot of criteria at this one to get the best, most complete results possible. Using the 2020-2024 American Community Survey Census data produced for the state of Iowa, we looked at every single city in the state. We paid particular attention to:
- Population density
- % of population that’s male vs. female (closer to a 50-50 ratio is better)
- % of households with kids
- Median age
- Number of unmarried people in each city
We then gave each city a “Singles Score.”
The higher the score, the better the city is for singles to find one another. We also limited our results to cities with over 10,000 people. For Iowa, that meant a total of 39 cities.
We updated this article for 2026. This is our eleventh time ranking the best cities for singles in Iowa.
Read on to see why Des Moines is the talk of the town while Norwalk is probably a bit on the bland side.
The full plate
Best Cities For Singles In Iowa
Click any column to sort. Search by city name.
| Rank | City | Singles Score | Population | Median Age | % Married Households | % Households w/ Kids |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Des Moines | 7.00 | 212,421 | 34.6 | 21.0% | 29.2% |
| 2 | Ames | 8.40 | 67,669 | 23.3 | 13.0% | 15.5% |
| 3 | Davenport | 10.80 | 100,913 | 37.5 | 22.0% | 24.9% |
| 4 | Storm Lake | 11.00 | 11,428 | 30.9 | 17.0% | 32.7% |
| 5 | Cedar Rapids | 12.90 | 137,264 | 37.3 | 28.0% | 26.7% |
| 6 | Dubuque | 13.20 | 59,174 | 38.1 | 30.0% | 24.2% |
| 7 | Coralville | 13.30 | 23,234 | 34.0 | 21.0% | 25.6% |
| 8 | West Des Moines | 13.90 | 71,083 | 36.0 | 24.0% | 25.7% |
| 9 | Cedar Falls | 14.20 | 40,888 | 29.3 | 30.0% | 21.9% |
| 10 | North Liberty | 14.30 | 21,125 | 31.7 | 26.0% | 33.7% |
| 11 | Marshalltown | 15.40 | 27,626 | 35.7 | 22.0% | 33.4% |
| 12 | Fort Dodge | 15.40 | 24,827 | 37.6 | 24.0% | 23.0% |
| 13 | Ottumwa | 17.20 | 25,430 | 36.7 | 26.0% | 35.0% |
| 14 | Muscatine | 17.40 | 23,489 | 37.0 | 23.0% | 34.2% |
| 15 | Waterloo | 17.80 | 67,008 | 36.7 | 26.0% | 26.2% |
| 16 | Council Bluffs | 18.20 | 62,586 | 38.7 | 22.0% | 27.7% |
| 17 | Oskaloosa | 18.50 | 11,504 | 37.6 | 32.0% | 28.9% |
| 18 | Ankeny | 18.70 | 72,615 | 33.6 | 36.0% | 37.1% |
| 19 | Clive | 18.70 | 19,012 | 37.4 | 32.0% | 37.7% |
| 20 | Waukee | 19.70 | 29,236 | 34.7 | 30.0% | 38.2% |
| 21 | Burlington | 20.30 | 23,728 | 42.5 | 31.0% | 26.5% |
| 22 | Pella | 21.50 | 10,720 | 35.2 | 36.0% | 24.8% |
| 23 | Newton | 21.80 | 15,700 | 42.6 | 33.0% | 23.1% |
| 24 | Carroll | 22.10 | 10,208 | 43.6 | 36.0% | 21.2% |
| 25 | Urbandale | 22.60 | 46,595 | 39.2 | 37.0% | 34.7% |
| 26 | Bettendorf | 23.60 | 39,647 | 40.9 | 25.0% | 35.2% |
| 27 | Clinton | 23.70 | 24,322 | 44.0 | 28.0% | 24.0% |
| 28 | Indianola | 23.80 | 16,044 | 35.9 | 32.0% | 30.6% |
| 29 | Spencer | 23.90 | 11,400 | 41.4 | 31.0% | 22.3% |
| 30 | Waverly | 24.80 | 10,494 | 32.8 | 34.0% | 29.2% |
| 31 | Boone | 25.00 | 12,424 | 41.3 | 37.0% | 29.1% |
| 32 | Fort Madison | 25.10 | 10,133 | 42.1 | 26.0% | 26.8% |
| 33 | Altoona | 25.30 | 21,495 | 36.1 | 34.0% | 33.9% |
| 34 | Le Mars | 26.70 | 10,640 | 39.0 | 36.0% | 31.6% |
| 35 | Marion | 27.90 | 41,896 | 40.6 | 42.0% | 34.0% |
| 36 | Johnston | 28.30 | 24,384 | 37.4 | 34.0% | 38.2% |
| 37 | Grimes | 29.50 | 16,366 | 35.4 | 34.0% | 38.5% |
| 38 | Pleasant Hill | 33.40 | 11,136 | 39.5 | 37.0% | 33.8% |
| 39 | Norwalk | 34.70 | 14,183 | 37.8 | 42.0% | 38.3% |
Source: U.S. Census ACS 2020-2024. 39 cities with more than 10,000 residents.
Summary
Summary: The Best Cities For Singles In Iowa For 2026
If you’re looking for a breakdown of cities in Iowa ranked by criteria that most agree make a place a great spot for finding a single person (and potentially love), this is an accurate list.
The best cities for singles in Iowa are Des Moines, Ames, Davenport, Storm Lake, Cedar Rapids, Dubuque, Coralville, West Des Moines, Cedar Falls, and North Liberty.
