Scotland has voted against independence, after the result in Fife, where 114,148 voted Yes and 139,788 No, made the result a mathematical certainty.
With 31 out of 32 regions declared, 55.42% had voted against going it alone compared to 44.58% who wanted Scotland to break the 307-year union with England.
First Minister Alex Salmond, who led the Yes campaign, said he accepted the verdict of the Scottish people and called on all Scots to do the same.
There were wins for Yes in only four of the 32 local authority areas - Glasgow, Dundee, West Dunbartonshire and North Lanarkshire.
While there was a comfortable majority in Dundee, the turnout in the city was 78.8% - lower than many other parts of Scotland, indicating that the Yes campaign has not managed to get voters out in sufficient numbers.
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The turnout in Glasgow was even lower at 75%, with 194,779 Yes votes - 53.49% - and 169,347 No votes - 46.51%.
At the same time, nationalists conceded victory in Mr Salmond's Aberdeenshire constituency.
SNP MSP Stewart Stevenson said: "At the end of the day, you always prefer to win but we always knew the size of the mountain we had to climb in Aberdeenshire.
"The challenge now bluntly, in Aberdeenshire and elsewhere, is for those who've won the referendum to deliver on the promises that they made to the people of Scotland."
The leader of the Better Together campaign, Alistair Darling, said in a tweet: "An extraordinary night. Humbled by the level of support and the efforts of our volunteers."
British Prime Minister David Cameron is due to make a live television address to the nation from 10 Downing Street.
He is expected to set out not only proposals to devolve more powers to the Scottish Parliament, but also significant changes to the constitutional settlement for other parts of the country.
Conservative Chief Whip Michael Gove, a close ally of Mr Cameron, indicated that this could involve reforms to ensure only English MPs can vote on English issues at Westminster.
I've spoken to Alistair Darling - and congratulated him on an well-fought campaign. #indyref
— David Cameron (@David_Cameron) September 19, 2014
Yes campaign wins Twitter battle
Meanwhile, the Yes campaign won the independence referendum battle on Twitter, the social network has revealed.
More than seven million tweets about the referendum have been sent since the first televised debate on 5 August, including 1.5m in the past 48 hours.
Overall, users posted more than 1.5m messages backing the Yes campaign, compared to 500,000 for No.
The most re-tweeted message on referendum day was Andy Murray's endorsement of the Yes campaign, which was shared more than 18,000 times.
During the campaign, the most-used has tag overall was #IndyRef, Twitter said, with 3.75m mentions.
The #VoteYes message was used 1.1m times, followed by #Scotland at 439,000, #ScotDecides at 272,000, and #BetterTogether at 224,000.
- Rte
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