Where can I find a free or inexpensive list of EVERY town in the world to add to my site's database?

Question

Ideally I'd like this in Excel or CSV format so I can add it easily into a database.

Answer 1

I'm afraid that is impossible. There are towns / cities in the world that we don't know about.

Answer 2

I typically pay about $125 or so just for a list of  US cities/states/zip codes/counties. The Mexican and Canadian counterparts run about $400 apiece on top of that. Sorry, but usually this sort of information doesn't come free, or cheap for that matter.

Answer 3

Well, I dunno how right-down-to-it accurate this is, but I know it has most of what you'd be looking for...

Scroll down to Sample Databases...the World Database has all major cities in the world. I doubt it has every town, though. Still, might be a start.

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/

You can find all of the tables to the World database in Excel format here: http://www.stat.fi/tup/maanum/taulukot_e...

I doubt you will find a more comprehensive list out there, though.