Right now: Austin is at 52, moderate.
Is the air safe to breathe in Austin today?
In Austin, BreatheCheck reads 52 as Go. The cutoffs: go below 101, keep it short and easy from 101 to 150, move it indoors above 150. These are our own thresholds, drawn on the EPA bands — EPA itself classifies 101–150 as Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups and does not tell you how long to stay out.
Go AQI 0–100
Normal outdoor plans. No change needed.
Short & unloaded AQI 101–150
A 20-minute dog walk, not a 2.5-hour run. Keep it brief and easy.
Don’t go AQI 151+
Move it indoors. Above 200 that becomes everyone, not just sensitive groups.
Above 200 this stops being a personal call: everyone indoors.
Duration and intensity are two separate dials
| Under 20 min | 20–60 min | Over an hour | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Easy | Go | Go | Go |
| Moderate | Go | Go | Go |
| Hard | Go | Go | Go |
Go Every combination lands the same way at this reading — a hard hour is no different from an easy twenty minutes. The two dials separate above 80.
Where people actually draw the line
All the thresholds people reported, and who reported them
- 60 Asthmatic runnerone runner’s own 156-run log
- 75–100 Daycare / schoolparents and staff in one r/toddlers thread, Aug 2025 — not a published rule
- 100 Parentcommunity-reported, escalating at 150 and 200
- 110 Runnercommunity-reported
If you’re staying in, filter the room you’re actually in
In attainment, with a season the AQI misses
Austin–Round Rock is the large Texas metro that never picked up a nonattainment designation. Travis and its neighboring counties signed an Early Action Compact with TCEQ and EPA in December 2002, a voluntary agreement to cut emissions ahead of schedule in exchange for deferring a designation, then carried on under the voluntary Ozone Advance program. The region was designated attainment or unclassifiable under both the 2008 and the 2015 eight-hour ozone standards. Dallas–Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio all carry designations. Austin does not.
The particle side has no comparable story, and it is where a single metro figure is least useful. I-35 runs the length of the built-up area carrying heavy through-freight, and what a household a few hundred feet off it breathes is not what a centrally sited monitor reports.
The thing residents most associate with bad air here is not in the AQI at all. Ashe juniper pollen from the stands west of the Balcones Escarpment peaks between December and February, locally called cedar fever, and the EPA index does not measure pollen of any kind. A green reading in January can coincide with the roughest two weeks of someone’s year. The number is not wrong when that happens. It is measuring something else.
Where this number sits
Of the 121 US metros reporting to us right now, Austin is number 25 and the highest of the 5 we track in Texas. The pollutant driving it today is PM2.5.
Nearby metros we also measure, and what they read at the same hour:
- San Antonio, TX — 74 miles away, AQI 52
- Houston, TX — 146 miles away, AQI 49
- Fort Worth, TX — 172 miles away, AQI 42
- Dallas, TX — 182 miles away, AQI 42
Where this reading comes from
AirNow’s Austin reporting area, about 0.4 miles from the metro centre.
What has air quality in Austin actually been?
1 of the 30 days we have recorded so far went above AQI 100.
| Date | Daily max AQI | EPA band | Hours read |
|---|---|---|---|
| 56 | Moderate | 22 | |
| 40 | Good | 22 | |
| 39 | Good | 23 | |
| 42 | Good | 23 | |
| 39 | Good | 23 | |
| 38 | Good | 22 | |
| 38 | Good | 23 | |
| 38 | Good | 23 | |
| 37 | Good | 23 | |
| 34 | Good | 23 | |
| 40 | Good | 23 | |
| 43 | Good | 24 | |
| 44 | Good | 23 | |
| 54 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 71 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 64 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 97 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 105 | Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups | 22 | |
| 64 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 57 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 65 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 62 | Moderate | 24 | |
| 62 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 75 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 83 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 75 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 62 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 61 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 51 | Moderate | 26 | |
| 54 | Moderate | 6 — partial day |
Questions about Austin
What is the air quality in Austin right now?
Which monitor does this number come from?
How does Austin compare with metros nearby?
Does this include pollen?
Put this number in context
Updated