How many people in Missouri speak a language other than English at home?
Refreshed annually
In 2024, about 435,100 people age 5 and older in Missouri spoke a language other than English at home. That's about one in 14 Missourians. Excluding English, Spanish is the most common language spoken in Missouri homes. About 41.3% of people speaking a non-English language spoke Spanish.
435K
people speak a language other than English at home (2024)
41.3%
Spanish's share of non-English language speakers (2024)
More than half of all people in Missouri speaking a non-English language at home spoke one of three languages: Spanish, Chinese (incl. Mandarin, Cantonese), or German.
Spanish is the most-spoken non-English language in Missouri homes, followed by Chinese (incl. Mandarin, Cantonese) and German.
People aged 5 or older who speak a language other than English at home, by language group (2024)
The ACS asks people if they speak a language other than English at home, what that language is, and how well they speak English. In Missouri, 435,100 residents ages 5 and older, or 7.4%, spoke a language other than English at home in 2024, compared with 23% nationally. Spanish was the most common non-English language, spoken by 179,800 people, or 41.3% of non-English speakers, followed by Chinese (including Mandarin and Cantonese) and German.
Based on data from 2024, Missouri's residents were less likely to speak a non-English language at home than the population nationwide. While about 1.8% of the US's 5+ population lived in Missouri, the state was home to 0.59% of the nation's non-English speakers — a sign that Missouri had a disproportionately smaller share of non-English households.
The non-English languages most concentrated in Missouri were Serbo-Croatian (6.1% of all US speakers), German (2.3%), and Swahili or other languages of Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa (2.3%).
In Missouri, no non-English language had its largest US-speaking population in the state. Serbo-Croatian was the language for which Missouri accounted for the largest share of US speakers, at 6.1%.
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Serbo-Croatian is the language for which Missouri makes up the largest share of US speakers
State share of national speakers by language, ages 5 and older (2024)
Population change
The US population gained 1.78 million people between 2024 and 2025.
Between 2018 and 2024, the number of people in Missouri whose primary language at home is not English increased 19.6%. The number of people speaking Spanish — the largest of the Census Bureau's four broad language categories in Missouri — grew 24.1% during this period.
In Missouri, the number of people speaking Spanish at home grew 24.1% since 2018
Non-English language speakers ages 5 and older at home, by broad language group
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Methodology
USAFacts standardizes data, in areas such as time and demographics, to make it easier to understand and compare.
Page sources
USAFacts endeavors to share the most up-to-date information available. We sourced the data on this page directly from government agencies; however, the intervals at which agencies publish updated data vary.
