Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
Band D council tax is £1,574. 37,466 people live in this large town in Fife, Scotland.
Housing is within reach: a typical home costs £141,600 and rent runs £868 a month. Walkability is a strength too (B+): 17% of commuters walk, cycle or take public transport. Health is a weak point: life expectancy is 76.5 for men and 80.7 for women. School results trail most towns: school leavers’ results beat a fifth of Scottish towns.
Figures: prices, HM Land Registry, the last three years · commuting, Census 2022 · life expectancy, ONS. Police Scotland doesn’t publish street-level crime, so Glenrothes has no Safety Grade and, without it, no overall grade. Its other subjects are graded below.
The 3 things Glenrothes does most differently from other towns.
Each subject compared with the 2,160 UK towns with an overall grade (schools within Scotland), ordered by how far Glenrothes is from typical. American towns are graded separately.
Police Scotland doesn’t publish street-level crime, so Glenrothes has no Safety Grade and, without it, no overall grade. Its other subjects are graded below.
How TownRatings grades towns →
Historic Environment Scotland lists 38 buildings inside Glenrothes’s locality, 4 of them in the top category, and 2 scheduled monuments.
Explore the history →Museums, castles, gardens and days out in and near Glenrothes. Best known first.
Castle · National Trust for ScotlandFalkland Palace Gardens4 km outside town, to the north
CastleBalgonie Castle1.9 km outside town, to the eastGardenGarden · National Trust for ScotlandKeepers Lawn3.9 km outside town, to the northGardenGarden · National Trust for ScotlandNorth Range Physic Garden3.9 km outside town, to the northGardenGarden · National Trust for ScotlandPercy Cane Garden4 km outside town, to the northGardenGarden · National Trust for ScotlandOak Lawn4 km outside town, to the northPhotos: each place’s Wikidata image, from Wikimedia Commons under the licence below (our copy, resized).
Data highlights are ordered by what stands out in Glenrothes.
The median, £141,600, rests on 2,046 sales in Glenrothes’s data zones from 2023 to 2025. Owners make up 65% of households, about level with Fife’s towns (63%) and above Scotland’s towns (60%). It is the 16th most expensive of 26 towns of 2,500+ in Fife.
Registers of Scotland data-zone sale prices · Scottish Government council tax · Scotland’s Census 2022 tenure · OGL · The Scottish median is our estimate from data-zone sales, brought to early-2025 prices.
Of its 17 schools, two are shown below, each with the reason. Between them, 12 primaries and three secondaries teach 5,789 pupils in Glenrothes.
| School | Level | Pupils | Letter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carleton Primary SchoolLargest primary schoolPrimary | Primary | 337 | – |
| Auchmuty High SchoolLargest secondary schoolSecondary | Secondary | 1,332 | C− |
Three quarters of people in Glenrothes rate their own health good or very good. At the census, 28% of people here had a disability, above Fife’s towns (26%) and Scotland’s towns (24%) alike. Poor health, by residents’ own account, affects 8.1% of the town.
| Census 2022 | Glenrothes | Fife | Scotland |
|---|---|---|---|
| Good or very good health | 75% | 77% | 78% |
| Bad or very bad health | 8.1% | 7.2% | 7.2% |
| Activities limited (health or disability) | 28% | 26% | 24% |
Scotland’s Census 2022, general health and disability · Public Health Scotland life expectancy by intermediate zone, 2020–24 · OGL · Because the census answers ignore age, a younger population lifts them; that is why the Health Grade is built on age-adjusted measures like life expectancy and early deaths.
The under-15s are 16% of the population here. Just over a fifth of residents are 65 or over, about level with Fife’s towns (20%) and above Scotland’s towns (19%). Half the people of Glenrothes are older than 44.6. Graduates make up 22% of adults.
52% women, 48% men
About 94 men for every 100 women. Across Scotland, 51% of residents are women.
| Glenrothes | Fife | Scotland | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 15 | 16% | 16% | 15% |
| 15–24 | 10% | 13% | 12% |
| 25–44 | 24% | 24% | 26% |
| 45–64 | 28% | 27% | 27% |
| 65+ | 21% | 20% | 19% |
| No qualifications | 18% | 17% | 17% |
| Apprenticeship | 8.5% | 8.2% | 7.5% |
| Highers or similar | 9.9% | 12% | 11% |
| Degree level | 22% | 27% | 32% |
Scotland’s Census 2022 · Fife and Scotland: all residents of their towns · OGL
Scotland’s Census was taken on 20 March 2022, a year after England and Wales’s lockdown census; 27% of workers were mainly at home, and shares here are of those who travelled.
Jobs per working resident: 1.3. Working mainly from home: 27% of workers, below Fife’s towns (30%) and Scotland’s towns (31%) alike. 3.4% of 16 to 64s claimed unemployment benefits in 2026. Of the commuters living in Glenrothes, 42% work in the town itself.
Scotland’s Census 2022 (NRS), method of travel and distance to work · DWP claimant count · OGL
The heritage lists give each building’s grade but not its age, so we don’t say which is oldest.
At the top of the list, 4 are Category A and 14 Category B. The national list protects 2 ancient monuments in Glenrothes. Scaled to its population, Glenrothes has 10 listed buildings per 10,000 people, below Fife’s towns (33) and Scotland’s towns (22) alike.
Historic Environment Scotland list, October 2026 · OGL
38 listed buildings in Glenrothes, 4 of them in the top category.
Glenrothes, Warout Road,St Paul's Roman Catholic Church with Presbytery and Boundary Walls: Photo: Michael Westwater ( Mcwesty ) at en · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Balfarg Farmhouse, henge & standing stones 280m WSW of: Photo: Sandy Gerrard · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Alburne Park, Balbirnie Bridge: Photo: Drkirstyross · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Western Avenue Underpass, Untitled (Industry, Past and Present): Photo: James Henry · CC BY-SA 2.0
7 notable people were born in Glenrothes.
Dougray Scott: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 · David Speedie: Mark Freeman from Hornchurch, UK, CC BY 2.0
The nearest towns and villages, from National Records of Scotland’s 2022 localities. See them on the map →
| Town | People | Miles | Overall | Cost | Safety | Health |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Glenrothes | 37,466 | — | — | A | — | D |
| Leslie | 2,888 | 1.5 | — | A | — | D |
| Cardenden and Auchterderran | 5,266 | 4.7 | — | A | — | D− |
| Kirkcaldy and Dysart | 51,135 | 4.9 | — | A | — | D |
| Kennoway | 4,665 | 5.2 | — | A | — | D |
| Buckhaven | 4,413 | 5.7 | — | A | — | D− |
| Methil | 10,712 | 5.9 | — | A | — | D− |
| Ballingry | 5,823 | 6 | — | A | — | D− |
No Scottish town has a Safety Grade or an overall grade yet: Police Scotland doesn’t publish street-level crime. People: Census 2022. Miles: centre to centre.
Homes cost less than in most UK towns: the median sale over three years was £141,600, against £277,000 in the typical town in England and Wales. On cost of living it is the 156th most affordable of 296 Scottish towns.
Band D council tax in Glenrothes is £1,574 for 2026–27, less than in 97% of UK towns (council, county, police and fire). Your own bill depends on your home’s band; check it on GOV.UK.
Large town in Fife, Scotland
Glenrothes is a locality of 37,466 people, in the Fife council area. TownRatings uses National Records of Scotland’s 2022 localities as Scotland’s towns: the physical town, as people mean the word, rather than a council area, so its figures cover the town itself. Localities split the big settlements into their towns, as ONS’s 2022 boundaries split conurbations in England and Wales.
Built from NRS geography and Census 2022
Sources: Scotland’s Census 2022 (National Records of Scotland), output areas summed to the NRS 2022 locality · Registers of Scotland house price statistics, medians and quartiles of residential sales by 2022 data zone, 2004 to 2025 (the 2023 to 2025 headline brought to early-2025 prices with each council’s medians) · Scottish Government, Council Tax by band 2026-27; Scottish Water charges 2026-27 · Scottish Government, Recorded Crime in Scotland (crimes, offences and clear-up rates by council area, 2016-17 to 2025-26); Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation 2020v2 crime domain and SIMD crime indicators (2014/15, 2017/18), 2011 data zones with Census 2022 residents · ONS gross disposable household income by council (2022), scaled to household income on England and Wales’s councils, with Scotland’s Census 2022 households · DWP / ONS Claimant Count via Nomis (2022 data zones, January to August 2026), over residents aged 16 to 64 at Scotland’s Census 2022; council series since 2015 · Scottish Government school contact list (31 July 2026) and school summary statistics (pupil census, September 2025); School Information Dashboard leavers’ attainment by school, 2022-23 to 2024-25 (data.gov.scot) · TownRatings grades: our own summary of the data, ranked against UK towns only. All under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains HM Land Registry data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026 (ONS boundaries). Northern Ireland: Source: NISRA; contains Land & Property Services data and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland information, © Crown copyright, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Scotland: contains National Records of Scotland data, Registers of Scotland data and SEPA data, © Crown copyright / © SEPA 2025, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.