High school football is the pride of Allen, a Dallas suburb of about 113,000 in Collin County that is tidy, safe and built around families. The Allen Event Center hosts concerts and hockey. If you like planned, well kept neighborhoods and good schools, this is the sort of place people move to for exactly that.
Weekends revolve around shopping and outdoor time. The Village at Allen and Watters Creek have restaurants and stores, the Premium Outlets pull in bargain hunters, and Bethany Lakes and Celebration Park give kids room to run. Downtown Allen keeps a small Main Street feel, and July 4 fireworks are a big community event. Plano, McKinney and Frisco are each a short drive, and Dallas is about 25 miles. Housing is expensive, a step above most of the metro, though it delivers strong schools and low crime. Traffic on US-75 and SH-121 is heavy at rush hour and on event nights. Spring storms bring hail and tornado risk, summers regularly pass 100 degrees, and ice can shut things down in winter.
Cities with a similar character, anywhere on the site.
Out of 10. Open any score to see how it’s worked out. “Data-based” scores come from published figures; “Hey! En Route estimate” scores are worked out from what we know about the city; “Hey! En Route rating” scores were set by our editors.
- Known as
- Home of the Allen Eagles (Eagle Stadium); Home of Allen Event Center; Suburban family-friendly Collin County city
- Founded
- 1872 platted along the Houston and Texas Central Railroad (named for Ebenezer Allen); 1953 incorporated
- Languages
- English; Spanish; Chinese; Hindi and Telugu; Korean; Vietnamese
- Airports
- Dallas Love Field (DAL), about 28 miles south; Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW), about 30 miles west; McKinney National Airport (TKI), about 10 miles north, general aviation only
- Tipping
- Restaurants 18-20%; bars $1-2 per drink or 15-20% of tab; taxis and rideshare 15-20%; hotel housekeeping $3-5 per night; bellhops $2-5 per bag; delivery 15-20%; counter service optional
About this data
Population 113,447 (Census Vintage 2025, July 1, 2025), land area 26.40 sq mi, median value and rent from Census QuickFacts (fetched). Metro 8,477,157 is the assigned DFW MSA figure; Allen is a secondary city. visitor_website (Visit Allen) and the events URL were seen in search results but not load-tested. Elevation, coordinates, founding, event names and months, hotel ranges, tipping, cost-of-living, crime, prices and distances are approximate or general knowledge; lower confidence because searches returned mostly links, not details.
