Address verification APIs compared
A postal address read against its own country's format: the kind of delivery point it names, whether its postcode is live, whether the building is in a national register, and how many companies are registered there.
Below are the 3 services Spaw is measured against for address verification, each with the figures its own public pricing and documentation pages state. Every row carries the date that vendor's pages were read, which is its own and need not match the others'; a row those pages carry no value for reads "not on the pages read" rather than a guess. Corrections are welcome at [email protected].
| service | pricing model | free tier | price per 1,000 at ~10k | registers held | checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spaw | Pay-as-you-go credit packs, or optional monthly plans that deposit the same credits every month for less; both through Stripe Checkout, credits from either never expire | 10 free credits every month, no card required | $7.80 (Growth pack: 5,000 credits for $39), or $5.80 on the Growth monthly plan (5,000 credits for $29 a month) | Six national address registers, each named in the answer with the coverage its own publisher claims: the United States National Address Database and the French Base Adresse Nationale, both partial, and the Swiss, Austrian, Czech (RÚIAN) and Norwegian (Matrikkelen) registers, all complete. Absence from a partial register is never read as evidence that an address does not exist. | own pricing page |
| Spaw vs Loqate | Pay-as-you-go credit purchases of £50, £100, £250, £500 and £1,000, each buying a lower per-lookup rate, plus bespoke plans; there are "no setup costs" | A trial rather than a standing tier: "Start your 45-day free trial" | £48 to £83 per 1,000 Address Verify lookups depending on tier (8.3p a lookup on the £50 tier down to 4.8p on the £1,000 tier). Address Capture is 6.9p to 4p in the UK and 6.8p to 3.9p for the rest of the world. | Not published as a register list on the pricing page, which states only "international data for over 245 countries and territories". | 2026-09-10 |
| Spaw vs Postcoder | Credit packs (500 to 200,000 credits, "valid for 12 months from purchase") or monthly plans (1,000 to 100,000 credits, with unused credits not carried over). "Your credits can be used for any Postcoder request." The pack prices themselves render as placeholders ("£--") on the page. | A free trial is offered; its duration and allowance are not stated on the pricing page | £100 per 1,000 UK address lookups pay-as-you-go (10.00p a request, 2.0 credits) or £45 per 1,000 on a monthly plan (4.50p). This is the address comparison, so only the address rate is quoted: the same account buys email and mobile validation at their own per-request rates, which are read off the same page. | Not published as a register list. The pricing page separates UK, Ireland and "Rest of world" address lookups and mentions a "PAF Public Sector Licence" for public sector discounts. | 2026-09-10 |
| Spaw vs Smarty | Annual lookup bundles on the Professional plan from $552 a year, sized 12K, 60K, 120K, 300K, 600K, 1M or 2M lookups; a monthly option and bespoke Custom pricing are offered. Only the $552 entry price is shown on the page. | A free trial rather than a standing tier: "42 days" and "1,000 address lookups", "No credit card required" | not on the pages read | Postal rather than cadastral: the page claims "210M addresses (incl 20M non-USPS)" and "over 20 million non-postal addresses", with "Up to 55 points of metadata" per lookup. It names no national address register. | 2026-09-10 |
Spaw vs Loqate
Loqate sells address capture and address verification alongside email, phone and bank validation, priced per lookup from a pay-as-you-go credit balance, with international data for over 245 countries and territories.
Where it fits better: Teams that want address capture in a checkout across many countries, with email, phone and bank validation billed from the same balance.
Full comparisonLoqate alternativesLoqate's own sitechecked 2026-09-10
Spaw vs Postcoder
Postcoder is a UK-first address lookup API sold as credits that any of its services can spend: address lookup, bank validation, email validation, mobile validation and OTP verification, each costing a published number of credits per request.
Where it fits better: UK checkouts that want a postcode-to-address picker from a licensed UK dataset, with email and mobile validation on the same balance.
Full comparisonPostcoder alternativesPostcoder's own sitechecked 2026-09-10
Spaw vs Smarty
Smarty sells US address verification against postal data: a lookup validates to the secondary level and returns delivery-point metadata that open registers cannot answer, including a DPV match code, the residential indicator and vacancy status.
Where it fits better: US mailers who need the postal service's own delivery-point answers — is it a real delivery point, is it occupied, is it residential — which open data cannot give.
Full comparisonSmarty alternativesSmarty's own sitechecked 2026-09-10
What Spaw answers
- Registers held
- Six national address registers, each named in the answer with the coverage its own publisher claims: the United States National Address Database and the French Base Adresse Nationale, both partial, and the Swiss, Austrian, Czech (RÚIAN) and Norwegian (Matrikkelen) registers, all complete. Absence from a partial register is never read as evidence that an address does not exist.
- Country coverage
- 206 countries and territories for the line layout, required fields and postcode pattern; 52 postal operators' rules for naming a delivery point that is not a street; 6 address registers; the ONS Postcode Directory for Great Britain, with Northern Ireland excluded because reusing BT postcodes needs a separate licence.
- Claims post is delivered
- No, and every answer says so: is_deliverable, is_cmra, is_vacant and is_residential answer null because that check is licensed and not enabled here. exists is a match in a national address register, never a statement that post arrives.
POST /v1/address — 1 credit for an address that stands as written. Free: addresses that cannot stand, and a missing country. Every rule is on the pricing page.
The other signals
Check the table against your own data
Every Spaw account gets free credits every month with no card, and one key answers every signal. Upload a list, keep your columns, and download only the rows you want. The pricing page has every billing rule in full.
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