This species inhabits the edges of sunny marshes, marshy ponds, and small slow-moving streams in open country and in forest along bodies of water without dense canopy cover. It may periodically range into adjacent non-wetland habitats in some regions. Eggs and larvae develop in the shallow water of ponds, marshes, ditches, slow streams, springs, or rain pools.

This species is known from east of the Mississippi River and south of the Ohio River, and its range stretches west of the northern Appalachians in Kentucky, to Tennessee, and into southeastern Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and then in the panhandle of western Florida, north through central Georgia and into western South Carolina, central and western North Carolina, eastern Virginia and extreme eastern West Virginia, up through Maryland, Delaware, eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey and southern New York in the USA. Following molecular analysis, subpopulations from north of the Ohio River and west of the Mississippi River, as well as one from the Delta region and Mississippi and one in northern Kentucky, have been assigned to Acris blanchardi, which has been removed from synonymy with this species (Gamble et al. 2008). Records from Mexico and Canada have also been assigned to A. blanchardi, making A. crepitans endemic to the USA.

Conservation Actions In-Place
The range of this species overlaps with several protected areas.