Baltimore has landed near the very bottom of a new national safety ranking, placing 180th out of 182 cities studied and earning the dubious distinction of America's third least-safe city, according to personal finance site WalletHub. The ranking lands even as city police have spent much of the year touting a sharp drop in homicides and nonfatal shootings.
WalletHub's 2026 report compared 182 cities, including the 150 most populous in the country plus at least two of the largest cities in every state, according to WBFF. The site, per its own methodology published at WalletHub, measured cities across three broad categories: home and community safety, natural-disaster risk, and financial safety, using 41 individual metrics to calculate a weighted average for each city before rank-ordering the results.
Those metrics ranged widely. WalletHub's data set included traffic fatalities and assaults per capita alongside economic indicators like the unemployment rate and the percentage of residents without health insurance, the company says. WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo said safety in a city includes protection from bodily harm and property damage as well as financial security, framing the study's inclusion of economic measures alongside traditional crime statistics.
Where Baltimore Fell Short — and Where It Didn't
Baltimore's standing wasn't uniformly bleak across every category WalletHub measured. The city ranked 167th in assaults per capita and 161st in hate crimes per capita, both middling-to-poor marks, while also placing 111th in traffic fatalities per capita and 106th in natural-disaster risk level — scores that put it closer to the middle of the 182-city pack on those specific measures.
On the financial side, which WalletHub says includes minimizing fraud and identity-theft risk, keeping residents employed and insured, and combating homelessness, Baltimore ranked 153rd in unemployment rate and 41st in the percentage of households with emergency savings. The city fared better in the percentage of uninsured population, ranking 39th nationally by that measure.
Police Data Shows a Different Trend Line
The Baltimore Police Department reported that homicides were down 23% through the first half of 2026, with 50 killings recorded compared with 65 during the same period in 2025. Nonfatal shootings fell 2.5% over the same stretch, from 165 to 150.
The department also touted a 60% homicide clearance rate and a 54% clearance rate for nonfatal shootings in the first half of the year. Robbery clearances stood at 48%, well above the national average of 27.6% cited in the same report, while aggravated-assault clearances reached 73% against a national benchmark of 46%. Police credited the Warrant Apprehension Task Force with 1,006 arrests through midyear, 146 more than the same period the year before, and said the department had achieved sustained compliance with three additional sections of its federal Consent Decree, bringing the total number of sections removed from oversight to five.
Independent reporting on the city's crime trends has painted a more mixed picture. The Banner reported that Baltimore saw fewer homicides in the first half of 2026 than in any comparable period since 1970, with killings falling 23% through June 20 compared with the same stretch a year earlier. But the same analysis found rapes down 15% and robberies down 12%, even as aggravated assaults rose 12% over that period. Through April, the city had recorded 469 violent crimes per 100,000 residents, more than triple the national rate, per The Banner.
How the National Picture Looks
WalletHub named Juneau, Alaska, the safest city in the country for 2026, with Overland Park, Kansas, taking third. Lupo said Juneau benefits from the lowest murder rate and lowest pedestrian fatality rates among cities studied; the Alaska capital also ranked 62nd-lowest in number of thefts, recorded no terrorist attacks or related incidents in the past decade, and its residents posted the ninth-highest median credit score nationally.
The rankings shift from year to year. A 2025 WalletHub-based analysis cited by The Hill had named Warwick, Rhode Island, as that year's safest city, while identifying Memphis, Tennessee, as having the highest homicide rate among cities discussed, at 40.6 per 100,000 residents. USA Today's coverage of the 2025 edition noted the study included the same 182-city sample size, though the evidence does not establish whether this year's methodology mirrors the prior year's data-release dates or definitions.
Some in the criminal-justice field argue rankings like WalletHub's miss part of the picture. According to USA Today, many in the criminal justice community are moving toward defining public safety not just by the absence of crime but by the presence of health and well-being indicators — a framing that could complicate how cities like Baltimore are judged against peers with very different economic and demographic profiles.
