Pittsburgh, PA has a D safety grade (38/100) with a violent crime rate of 427 per 100,000, 21% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · very large city
Pittsburgh, PA Crime Rate & Safety
At 317,177 residents, Pittsburgh is a very large city: FBI UCR Table 8 rates (per 100,000) here are read against PA and U.S. averages before the offense-family breakdown.
Pittsburgh, PA carries a PlainCrime D safety grade with violent crime 21% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Pittsburgh, PA shows violent crime at 427.2 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,280.1 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 21% above the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade D from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
D safety grade
427.2/100K violent
2280.1/100K property
+21% vs U.S.
What the 2024 FBI UCR record shows for Pittsburgh, PA
Position in the state cohort
Pittsburgh reported a higher violent-crime rate than most comparable Pennsylvania cities
At 427.2 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Pittsburgh ranks 53 of 838 — above 785 of the 837 other Pennsylvania cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +554.1% against the cohort median of 65.3. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Comparable rate records
Pittsburgh's closest reported-rate comparisons are in the Pennsylvania cohort
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Pittsburgh's 427.2 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Clairton (425.4), Wilkes-Barre (431.6), Masontown (416.3), West Reading (440.3). These are same-year agency submissions that pass the same completeness screen, not a claim that the cities have identical conditions. They make the cohort position above checkable against named records instead of a generic state average.
Offense mix
Violent offenses make up an unusually large share of the reported mix
Violent offenses are 15.8% of the 8,587 Part I offenses reported in Pittsburgh for 2024, against a median of 10.0% across comparable Pennsylvania cities — a gap of 5.8 points. Offense mix is shaped by which agencies report and how incidents are classified as well as by the underlying offenses, so it describes the reported record rather than a settled difference in conditions.
Property-offense composition
Burglary and vehicle theft carry more of the property total than they do across the cohort
Larceny-theft is 74.8% of reported property offenses in Pittsburgh, against a cohort median of 85.9%. The remainder is burglary (738) and motor vehicle theft (1,088). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Pittsburgh's FBI UCR Table 8 municipal row. Per-100,000 rates use the reporting-year population on that row; cities that fail the completeness test stay out of rate rankings. A citywide figure rarely describes any single neighbourhood inside the municipal boundary.
On a very large city row, these are citywide reported offense totals - not neighbourhood advice. Conditions vary by place and time; reporting rates differ across jurisdictions.
Pittsburgh's 2024 municipal footprint
Across 55.4 Census sq mi, Pittsburgh logged 130.6 property and 24.5 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Pittsburgh's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (63% of 8,587 offenses; mix index 4,302).
Violent offenses are 16% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (55.4 sq mi); mix index is HHI x 10,000 on the offense-type shares above. Distinct from the per-100K rates in the hero.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program · split lines are the U.S. national averages
Similar-Size Cities in Pennsylvania
Crime rates read differently at different scales, so these are the Pennsylvania cities closest to Pittsburgh in population. Their populations run from 71,232 to 124,599, against 317,177 here. Or use our
side-by-side compare tool
to benchmark two cities directly.
In 2024, Pittsburgh reported 1,355 violent crimes and 7,232 property crimes, for a total of 8,587 reported offenses.
What is the most common crime in Pittsburgh?
The most common crime type in Pittsburgh is larceny-theft, accounting for 63.0% of all reported crimes (5,406 incidents in 2024).
Large-city read: Pittsburgh's rates come from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, CIUS Table 8, vintage 2024.
Incomplete reporters stay out of rate rankings. Cross-check population with Census ACS; state UCR programs for statewide context. Primary verify links: FBI.gov UCR, Census QuickFacts.
Disclaimer (very large city): informational crime rates only - not legal, insurance, or personal-safety advice. Source: FBI UCR. Ask a qualified professional before acting.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Pittsburgh, PA rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.