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.
The table uses Melissa's public pricing and documentation pages as checked on 2026-09-16, and Spaw's own pricing page. A row those pages carry no value for is marked "not on the pages read" rather than guessed at, and that is a statement about the reading and not about what Melissa publishes.
| spaw | melissa | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | 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 | 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. |
| Free tier | 100 free credits every month, no card required | 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. |
| Price per 1,000 at about 10k | $7.80 (Growth pack: 5,000 credits for $39), or $5.80 on the Growth monthly plan (5,000 credits for $29 a month) | $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). |
| Price per 1,000 at about 100k | $4.49 (Volume pack: 100,000 credits for $449), or $3.49 on the Volume monthly plan (100,000 credits for $349 a month) | not on the pages read |
| Addresses no register covered billed | An address that stands as written costs 1 credit whether or not a register carried the building; where no register covers the country, exists answers null rather than a verdict | not on the pages read |
| Addresses that cannot stand billed | No: an address that cannot stand as written is free whatever the reason, and so are repeats within 7 days and rows repeating an address already in the same job | not on the pages read |
| 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. | 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. |
| 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. | "Global Address Verification & Validation for 250+ Countries & Territories" |
| 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. | Yes. The address-verification page names DPV ("to verify the address is deliverable"), SuiteLink for missing suite numbers, RBDI (a residential or business delivery indicator), AddressPlus for apartment numbers, "Non-USPS data (5+ million addresses not supported by USPS)" and coordinates "up to the rooftop (delivery point) level". |
| Bulk limit | 100,000 addresses per bulk job, with an HMAC-signed completion webhook | not on the pages read |
| Batch API | 100 addresses per synchronous request | not on the pages read |
| Rate limit | 50 requests per second per key on the address endpoints | not on the pages read |
| Official SDKs | Python, Node.js, PHP | not on the pages read |
| Data retention | No history row and no log line carrying the address. What a lookup leaves is the 7-day marker that makes a repeat free and the count behind seen_by_you, both kept under a digest, never the address. The address itself is kept only on the account's own suppression list and in its monitors. Bulk input lists and result files are deleted with the job after 30 days. | not on the pages read |
checked 2026-09-16 · sources: Melissa pricing, Melissa address verification
When Melissa 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.
- CASS and DPV certified for the United States, SERP for Canada, PAF for the United Kingdom
- Delivery-point answers licensed postal data can give: DPV, a residential or business indicator, missing suite numbers
- Rooftop geocodes and transliteration to and from native scripts
- A free global tier of 250 records a month
When Spaw fits better
Developers who want a written address parsed against its own country's rules and checked against open registers, where a field nobody could evaluate answers null instead of a guess.
- Melissa answers whether post is delivered to an address; Spaw does not and says so: is_deliverable, is_cmra, is_vacant and is_residential answer null because that check is licensed and not enabled
- Spaw's confirmation map says which open dataset stood behind each part of the address, and building_use and coordinates come from the national registers themselves, never from a postal file
- Melissa prices the United States and the rest of the world on different scales; a Spaw credit buys one answered address lookup wherever the address is, and an address that cannot stand as written costs nothing
- Spaw names the register that answered and whether its coverage is complete or partial, and never fills a gap in open data with a guess
Questions
Does Spaw charge for addresses no register covers?
An address that stands as written costs 1 credit, whether or not a register carried the building. An address that cannot stand costs nothing, whatever the reason, and a repeat within seven days is free. Where no register covers the country, or where the register that answered is one whose coverage is partial and does not carry the address, exists answers null — not evaluated — rather than a verdict, and the not_in_register weight cannot fire. Melissa does not publish how it bills them.
Can I move an address list from Melissa to Spaw?
Yes. Upload the CSV in the dashboard or POST it to the bulk endpoint, up to 100,000 addresses a job; Spaw keeps your columns and adds 64 result columns after them (the address as submitted, the answer, the datasets behind it, what the row cost and whether your suppression list answered it), and a country column gives each row its own country. Rows repeating an address already in the list are answered once, cost nothing, and are counted as duplicates.
Is there a free tier?
Every Spaw account receives 100 free credits at the start of each month with no card on file, and unused free credits accumulate. Melissa offers: 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.
Try Spaw on your own list
Free credits every month, no card. Upload a list, keep your columns, and download only the rows you want. See the pricing page for every rule, or the Melissa alternatives.
Melissa is a trademark of its owner. Spaw is not affiliated with it. Markdown version: /compare/melissa.md