# Address verification APIs compared

Spaw against Geoapify, Google Address Validation API, Ideal Postcodes, Lob, Loqate, Melissa, Postcode.eu, Postcoder, PostGrid and Smarty on pricing, billing rules, the registers behind each answer and limits, taken from each vendor's own pages on the date it was read.

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 an open address register, and how many companies are registered there.

Below are the 10 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: support@spaw.co.

| Service | Pricing model | Free tier | Price per 1,000 at about 10k | Registers held | Checked |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Spaw | Pay-as-you-go credit packs whose credits never expire, or optional plans, billed monthly or yearly, that deposit the same credits every month for less and roll unused plan credits over up to three months' allowance; both through Stripe Checkout | 100 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) | Open address registers for 23 countries and territories, each named in the answer with its declared coverage, complete or partial. Complete, building by building: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Latvia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland. Partial, building by building: Brazil, Denmark, France (with French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Mayotte, Réunion, St. Barthélemy, St. Martin and St. Pierre & Miquelon), Germany and United States. Partial, streets only: Great Britain. House-number ranges as well: United States. Absence from a partial register is never read as evidence that an address does not exist. | own pricing page, https://spaw.co/pricing |
| [Spaw vs Geoapify](https://spaw.co/compare/geoapify.md) | Daily credit quotas on monthly subscriptions: Free (3,000 credits a day), API 10 (10,000 a day, $59 billed monthly), API 25 (25,000, $109), API 50 (50,000, $179), API 100 (100,000, $299), API 250 (250,000, $609) and Custom ("Unmetered credits / day", from $860). "1 Geocoding API request costs 1 credit"; in a batch each address counts 0.5 credits, plus 1 credit to create the job and 1 for each result request. A yearly term is offered, but its prices are not in the page text read. | A standing free plan: "3,000 credits / day", "No credit card required", up to 5 requests a second, usable for "commercial websites and apps" with the required Geoapify and data-source attribution | not on the pages read | No national register is named. The geocoder draws on "OpenStreetMap, OpenAddresses, Who's on First, Geonames, Wikipedia, and more", and stored validation results must keep "the attribution to OpenStreetMap, OpenAddresses, Geonames". | 2026-09-22 |
| [Spaw vs Google Address Validation API](https://spaw.co/compare/google-address-validation.md) | "Pay-as-you-go", "charging per request according to the pricing table", under two SKUs named on the billing page, Address Validation Pro and Address Validation Enterprise; the per-request rates render inside the pricing table and are not stated in the page text as fetched, so no figure is quoted here. | not on the pages read | not on the pages read | Google's own data plus, for the "US" and "PR" regions when enableUspsCass is set, the USPS Coding Accuracy Support System; the overview says USPS "evaluates requests for artificially created addresses" and that Google must "stop validation and report relevant information to USPS in such cases". | 2026-09-16 |
| [Spaw vs Ideal Postcodes](https://spaw.co/compare/ideal-postcodes.md) | Pay-as-you-go credit packs, "No Subscriptions. No Monthly Fees.": 200 credits for £9 ("£0.045 per lookup"), 1,100 for £42 (£0.038), 4,300 for £155 (£0.036), 12,800 for £420 (£0.033) and 32,100 for £900 (£0.028). "Credits are valid for 12 months"; the lookup guide adds that the timer "only starts when you begin using that batch of credits". Larger volumes and UK registered charities are priced on request. | A trial rather than a standing tier: "1-Month Trial", "50 free credits, full support and no credit card needed"; the trial searches worldwide except Ireland, "which requires separate licensing" | £33 per 1,000 lookups on the 12,800-credit pack (£420, "£0.033 per lookup"), the smallest pack that covers 10,000. | Named per country on the coverage table: Royal Mail PAF and OS AddressBase Core for the United Kingdom, Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man; the Eircode Address File (ECAF) and Eircode Address Database (ECAD) for Ireland; USPS for the United States, its territories and the freely associated states; Geoscape G-NAF for Australia, Christmas Island, the Cocos (Keeling) Islands and Norfolk Island; Kadaster for the Netherlands; and Kartverket for Norway and for Svalbard and Jan Mayen. The other countries' rows name no dataset. The pricing page lists Multiple Residence, Not Yet Built, Northern Ireland Pointer, Eircode, AddressBase Core and AddressBase Premium as additional datasets. | 2026-09-22 |
| [Spaw vs Lob](https://spaw.co/compare/lob.md) | Verifications are priced per call on top of a print-and-mail plan: on the Developer plan ($0 a month) "US Address Verifications $0.05/additional" and international $0.07; on Startup ($260 a month) $0.025 with "1,000 included for $25/mo" and international $0.06 with 500 included for $30 a month; on Growth ($550 a month) $0.009 with "50,000 included for $450/mo" and international $0.055 with 10,000 included for $550 a month; Enterprise is "Contact us for details". | The Developer plan is "Starting at $0 / month" with verifications billed per call; the site offers "Get started for free". | $50 per 1,000 US verifications on the Developer plan ($0.05 each) or $25 per 1,000 on Startup ($0.025 each beyond the 1,000 included for $25 a month); international $70 or $60. | Postal: "USPS CASS certification", plus a deliverability likelihood "based on Lob's mail delivery data to over half of US households". | 2026-09-16 |
| [Spaw vs Loqate](https://spaw.co/compare/loqate.md) | Pay-as-you-go credit purchases of £50, £100, £250, £500 and £1,000 (or 75€, 150€ and 300€), each buying a published per-lookup rate for every service, plus bespoke plans; "Credit is valid for 12 months after the purchase date" and there are no setup costs. The pricing page shows two rate tables headed "New Pricing" and "Old Pricing" without saying which accounts each applies to; the figures here are from "New Pricing". Its usage-example selector also lists a £2,500 plan that neither table prices. | A trial rather than a standing tier: "Start your 45-day free trial"; the FAQ adds "You get free credits to test the service" | £82 to £86 per 1,000 Address Verify lookups on the "New Pricing" table: 8.2p a lookup on the £100, £250 and £500 tiers and 8.6p on the £50 and £1,000 tiers. Address Capture is 8.6p to 4.9p in the UK and 7.1p to 4.1p for the rest of the world. | Not published as a register list. The Address Verify documentation describes "postal authority datasets and proprietary enhanced data covering countries worldwide", and the pricing page offers enhanced UK datasets ("Eircodes, Multi-Residence, Not Yet Built data and Property Attributes data") on request. | 2026-09-22 |
| [Spaw vs Melissa](https://spaw.co/compare/melissa.md) | US Address Verification pay-as-you-go "Starting at $40" for 10,000 credits at "10 Credits Per Address" (the same page's FAQ says a US address equals 3 credits and a global address 10); an API subscription "Starting at $5,145" for 1,000,000 records a year; an unlimited-records plan "Starting at $16,000". Global Address Verification subscriptions from $40 a month for 1,000 records and $95 a month for 2,500. | Global Address Verification "GAV Free" at $0 for 250 records a month; 1,000 lookup credits a month after a one-time $4.97 KYC/AML verification fee, described on the pricing page. | $40 per 1,000 US addresses on the smallest pay-as-you-go pack, taking the pack's own "10 Credits Per Address" ($40 buys 10,000 credits). | Postal, not cadastral: "a postal certified address engine using official government data including CASS (USPS), SERP (Canada Post), PAF (Royal Mail) and more"; no national address register is named. | 2026-09-16 |
| [Spaw vs Postcode.eu](https://spaw.co/compare/postcode-eu.md) | Annual tiers that include validations: Tier 1 €50, Tier 2 €100, Tier 3 €250, Tier 4 €500 and Tier 5 €1,000 a year, each with a per-validation rate by country group. "Up to the Tier amount you can perform a mix of validations", subscriptions "are automatically upgraded when the maximum of the Tier is reached", and past the highest Tier usage "will be invoiced in blocks of 10% and the rates of this Tier apply". A validation is "a bundle of related requests that were used to validate an address". An SLA (€1,000 + 2% a year) and a DORA addendum (€2,500 a year) are extra. | A trial rather than a standing tier: "After registering an account it is possible to try the APIs for free", and "Testing the API is without obligations" | €17.64 per 1,000 validations on Tier 3 (€250 a year, "€0.01764 each") for Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Luxembourg, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom cost more a validation, so 10,000 of them fall in Tier 4 (€500 a year): €34.17 per 1,000 for Germany (€0.03417 each) and €43.30 for Italy and the United Kingdom (€0.0433 each). "Tier prices are including validations" and "Prices and quantities are per year", so the tier amount is paid in full: 10,000 validations cost €250 a year for the eleven countries (€25 per 1,000) and €500 for Germany, Italy or the United Kingdom (€50 per 1,000). | Named per country, "only official sources": the Dutch government's Basisregistraties Adressen en Gebouwen (BAG); for Belgium the Flemish CRAB, the Brussels UrbIS and the Walloon ICAR; Luxembourg's Administration du cadastre et de la topographie; Austria's federal Adressregister; the Swiss Gebäude- und Wohnungsregister; France's Base Adresse Nationale; Royal Mail's Postcode Address File for the United Kingdom; Spain's Catastro in CartoCiudad; Denmark's Adresseregister (DAR); GeoNorge for Norway; DVV and Posti for Finland; Lantmäteriet for Sweden; Poste Italiane for Italy; and Deutsche Post, with OpenStreetMap for locations, for Germany. | 2026-09-22 |
| [Spaw vs Postcoder](https://spaw.co/compare/postcoder.md) | 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 ("£--") in the pack list; the credit calculator's recommendation box shows "Credit pack £25 500 Credits" and "Monthly plan £25 1,000 Credits". Larger packs and plans with volume discounts are quoted. | 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. | 2026-09-22 |
| [Spaw vs PostGrid](https://spaw.co/compare/postgrid.md) | Quoted: the pricing page asks for annual mail-piece and address-verification volumes in bands from "Less than 50,000" to "More than 1,000,000" and publishes no rate. | "Try for Free. Sign Up for Address Verification API" on the product page; no standing free volume is stated. | not on the pages read | Postal: "CASS & SERP Certified", matching "customer addresses with official postal records from USPS and Canada Post"; also "CASS/NCOA Certified". | 2026-09-16 |
| [Spaw vs Smarty](https://spaw.co/compare/smarty.md) | 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 subscription "expires when the address lookups or the time runs out, whichever comes first"; there are no overage costs, and an exhausted plan answers 402 "payment required" unless auto-renewal buys a new block. | 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. | 2026-09-22 |

## Spaw vs Geoapify

Geoapify is a location platform (maps, routing, places and geocoding) whose Geocoding API is also sold for address validation: an address is matched against open datasets such as OpenStreetMap and OpenAddresses and returned with coordinates and confidence scores for the city, the street and the building.

Where it fits better: Teams already using Geoapify for maps or routing that want an open-data address check with coordinates on a free daily allowance.

- Full comparison: https://spaw.co/compare/geoapify.md
- Geoapify alternatives: https://spaw.co/alternatives/geoapify.md
- Geoapify's own site: https://www.geoapify.com
- Checked on 2026-09-22

## Spaw vs Google Address Validation API

Google's Address Validation API, part of Google Maps Platform, validates, standardises and geocodes an address, reports a confirmation level per component with inferred and replaced parts, and can run US and Puerto Rico addresses through USPS CASS on request.

Where it fits better: Checkout and delivery forms that want Google's component-level correction and geocoding in the countries its coverage table lists, inside a Google Maps Platform account.

- Full comparison: https://spaw.co/compare/google-address-validation.md
- Google Address Validation API alternatives: https://spaw.co/alternatives/google-address-validation.md
- Google Address Validation API's own site: https://mapsplatform.google.com
- Checked on 2026-09-16

## Spaw vs Ideal Postcodes

Ideal Postcodes is a UK-first address lookup, autocomplete and cleansing API answered from Royal Mail's Postcode Address File, with Ordnance Survey AddressBase Core and Premium offered as additional datasets, sold as pay-as-you-go credit packs, with international address data for more than 240 countries and territories; its site also lists phone and email validation among its products.

Where it fits better: UK checkouts and CRMs that want a postcode-to-address picker and address cleansing from Royal Mail's address file, with UPRNs and coordinates included, paid for by the lookup rather than by subscription.

- Full comparison: https://spaw.co/compare/ideal-postcodes.md
- Ideal Postcodes alternatives: https://spaw.co/alternatives/ideal-postcodes.md
- Ideal Postcodes' own site: https://ideal-postcodes.co.uk
- Checked on 2026-09-22

## Spaw vs Lob

Lob is a print-and-mail platform whose Address Verification API validates, standardises and enriches US and international addresses, CASS certified, with USPS delivery-point data and a deliverability likelihood drawn from Lob's own mail delivery records.

Where it fits better: Teams that already print and mail through Lob and want the same account to clean the addresses first, with the postal service's delivery-point answers for the United States.

- Full comparison: https://spaw.co/compare/lob.md
- Lob alternatives: https://spaw.co/alternatives/lob.md
- Lob's own site: https://www.lob.com
- Checked on 2026-09-16

## 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 comparison: https://spaw.co/compare/loqate.md
- Loqate alternatives: https://spaw.co/alternatives/loqate.md
- Loqate's own site: https://www.loqate.com
- Checked on 2026-09-22

## Spaw vs Melissa

Melissa sells address verification for the United States and "250+ Countries & Territories" against postal data, CASS and DPV certified, with a credit model for pay-as-you-go use and annual subscriptions sized by records, alongside name, phone, email and identity verification.

Where it fits better: Mailers and CRM teams that want the postal services' own delivery-point answers for the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, from one vendor that also sells change-of-address and identity checks.

- Full comparison: https://spaw.co/compare/melissa.md
- Melissa alternatives: https://spaw.co/alternatives/melissa.md
- Melissa's own site: https://www.melissa.com
- Checked on 2026-09-16

## Spaw vs Postcode.eu

Postcode.eu, from Postcode.nl B.V., sells address autocomplete and validation APIs for fourteen European countries, each answered from the official sources its pages name (government address registers for most, the postal operator's file for others), priced per validation inside an annual tier.

Where it fits better: European checkouts and CRMs that want autocomplete and validation answered from each country's official address source under one annual subscription.

- Full comparison: https://spaw.co/compare/postcode-eu.md
- Postcode.eu alternatives: https://spaw.co/alternatives/postcode-eu.md
- Postcode.eu's own site: https://www.postcode.eu
- Checked on 2026-09-22

## 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 comparison: https://spaw.co/compare/postcoder.md
- Postcoder alternatives: https://spaw.co/alternatives/postcoder.md
- Postcoder's own site: https://postcoder.com
- Checked on 2026-09-22

## Spaw vs PostGrid

PostGrid sells an address verification API for the United States and Canada, CASS and SERP certified against USPS and Canada Post data, with an international service for "245+ Countries and Territories", autocomplete, parsing, batch verification and a Salesforce integration, priced by quotation.

Where it fits better: Businesses mailing in the United States and Canada that want postal-certified verification and autocomplete under one contract, priced on their annual volume.

- Full comparison: https://spaw.co/compare/postgrid.md
- PostGrid alternatives: https://spaw.co/alternatives/postgrid.md
- PostGrid's own site: https://www.postgrid.com
- Checked on 2026-09-16

## 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 comparison: https://spaw.co/compare/smarty.md
- Smarty alternatives: https://spaw.co/alternatives/smarty.md
- Smarty's own site: https://www.smarty.com
- Checked on 2026-09-22

## What Spaw answers

- **Registers held:** Open address registers for 23 countries and territories, each named in the answer with its declared coverage, complete or partial. Complete, building by building: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Latvia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland. Partial, building by building: Brazil, Denmark, France (with French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Mayotte, Réunion, St. Barthélemy, St. Martin and St. Pierre & Miquelon), Germany and United States. Partial, streets only: Great Britain. House-number ranges as well: United States. Absence from a partial register is never read as evidence that an address does not exist.
- **Country coverage:** Postal formats for 207 countries and territories: the line layout for 199 of them, and the required fields and postcode pattern wherever the table records them; 52 postal operators' rules for naming a delivery point that is not a street; open address registers for 23 countries and territories; postcode directories for Great Britain from the ONS Postcode Directory, with Northern Ireland excluded because reusing BT postcodes needs a separate licence, and for 108 more countries and territories from GeoNames' postal codes.
- **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 an open address register, never a statement that post arrives.

`POST /v1/address` — 1 credit for a valid address. Free: invalid addresses, and requests without a country. Every rule is on the pricing page: https://spaw.co/pricing

- Documentation: https://spaw.co/docs/address-verification
- Product page: https://spaw.co/products/address-verification
- Free tool: https://spaw.co/tools/address-checker

## The other signals

- [Email verification](https://spaw.co/compare/email.md): 9 services compared
- [Phone intelligence](https://spaw.co/compare/phone.md): 9 services compared
- [IP intelligence](https://spaw.co/compare/ip.md): 13 services compared
- [Business verification](https://spaw.co/compare/entity.md): 2 services compared
- [Cross-signal consistency](https://spaw.co/compare/consistency.md): no comparable vendor publishes figures for it
- [Every comparison on one page](https://spaw.co/compare)

## 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: https://spaw.co/pricing. Get your API key: https://spaw.co/register

Product names are trademarks of their owners. Spaw is not affiliated with any of them.

Reference: https://spaw.co/compare/address