Albany County has a total area of 533 square miles, of which 523 square miles is land and 10 square miles is water.
Albany County is in the east central part of New York, extending southward and westward from the point where the Mohawk River joins the Hudson River. Its eastern boundary is the Hudson; a portion of its northern boundary is the Mohawk. The terrain of the county ranges from flat near the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers to high and hilly to the southwest, of the Helderberg Escarpment and the Helderberg Mountains.