Live ranking · 2,421 cities with a ground station
The cities with the cleanest air in the world Right now, by live air quality (AQI)
Right now, Las Cruces, United States has the cleanest air of the 2,421 cities with a live ground-station reading, at AQI 1 (Good), followed by Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil (6) and Caxias do Sul, Brazil (6).
The United States has 18 of the 100 cities on this list, Brazil 13 and Canada 10. 100 of them are in the "Good" band, 0 to 50.
- cities with a live reading
- 2,421
- of the top 100 with Good air, AQI 50 or less
- 100
- of the top 100 in the United States
- 18
- countries in the top 100
- 27
Updated . Lower is better on the US EPA index: 0–50 is Good, above 300 is Hazardous. Each row shows how old its reading is.
Cleanest air now: Las Cruces · AQI 1
The 100 cities with the cleanest air right now
Countries with the cleanest air on average
The average current AQI across each country's cities with a live station reading, for countries with at least three.
- 1Nicaragua3 citiesAQI 13
- 2Lebanon5 citiesAQI 19
- 3Paraguay5 citiesAQI 23
- 4Myanmar3 citiesAQI 24
- 5Trinidad and Tobago3 citiesAQI 27
- 6Canada55 citiesAQI 31
- 7Argentina15 citiesAQI 32
- 8Norway5 citiesAQI 32
- 9Spain44 citiesAQI 34
- 10Cyprus4 citiesAQI 34
- 11Brazil60 citiesAQI 35
- 12Australia20 citiesAQI 35
- 13Portugal5 citiesAQI 35
- 14Japan191 citiesAQI 38
- 15Sweden7 citiesAQI 39
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Frequently asked
About this ranking
Which city has the cleanest air in the world right now?
Of the 2,421 cities with a live ground-station reading, Las Cruces, United States, at a US AQI of 1 (Good). Air quality changes by the hour, so the list moves through the day.
Which country has the cleanest air right now?
Averaged across each country's cities with a live station reading (at least three), Nicaragua, at AQI 13, then Lebanon (19) and Paraguay (23). A country average describes its measured cities, not its countryside.
How is this ranking made?
Every city is read on the same US EPA Air Quality Index, from the ground monitoring stations near its center (within 10 km, or 25 km where none is closer; via OpenAQ), and only cities with a current station reading are ranked: 2,421 of the 5,420 in Airleaf's directory right now. Cities without a nearby station show an estimate from the CAMS air-quality model on their own report, but a model can be far off at the extremes, so those estimates aren't ranked against measurements. A city whose station goes quiet drops out rather than topping the list with an old figure.
Why does IQAir or my government show a different number?
Different stations, different averaging and sometimes a different scale. Many governments publish their own index: India's CPCB scale, Malaysia's API (IPU) and Singapore's PSI all read the same air differently from the US AQI, and most average over 24 hours where an app shows the latest hour. Each city's report names its source and the time of the reading.
What counts as clean air?
On the US scale, an AQI of 0 to 50 is good. For fine particles that means 9 µg/m³ of PM2.5 or less since the EPA tightened its table in 2024. The World Health Organization's guideline is stricter still: an annual average of 5 µg/m³ and a 24-hour average of 15.