Data & methodology

ChargingAtlas is a directory, not a guess. Every station count, network, and connector on the site is computed directly from one public dataset — no editorializing on the numbers, no invented stations.

The source

All station data comes from the U.S. Department of Energy / NREL Alternative Fuels Data Center (AFDC) Station Locator. We pull the public, electric, currently-available stations for each state we cover. As of June 2026 that's 19,097 stations across 534 city pages.

How we count

We include only public stations (no private/fleet-only sites).
A city page is published only when it has at least three public stations — our match-gate, so we never spin up a thin page for a one-charger town.
"Level 2 ports" and "DC fast ports" are the sums of NREL's per-station port counts. "Networks" and "connectors" are tallied from each station's own NREL record.
"Free" vs "paid" reflects NREL's pricing field, which is often blank — when it's blank we say so rather than guess.

What we deliberately don't claim

We are not a live availability map. A charger listed here can be busy, broken, or gated. Check the network's own app before you rely on a specific plug.
We don't invent stations, specs, or counts. If NREL doesn't record it, we don't state it.
We're not affiliated with NREL, the DOE, or any charging network.

Freshness

NREL updates the AFDC continuously; we refresh our snapshots weekly. Each page shows the date its data was retrieved.