# Spaw vs Smarty: address verification API comparison

How Spaw and Smarty compare on pricing, billing rules, the registers behind each answer and limits, from Smarty's public pages checked on 2026-09-10. Corrections: support@spaw.co.

| | Spaw | Smarty |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Pricing model | 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 | 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. |
| Free tier | 10 free credits every month, no card required | A free trial rather than a standing tier: "42 days" and "1,000 address lookups", "No credit card required" |
| 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) | not on the pages read |
| Price per 1,000 at about 100k | $4.99 (Volume pack: 100,000 credits for $499), or $3.99 on the Volume monthly plan (100,000 credits for $399 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 | 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. | 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. |
| 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. | The United States on the page checked; international address verification is priced on a separate page. |
| 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. | Yes. The metadata named on the page includes a DPV match code, the residential/commercial indicator (RDI), vacancy status, carrier route and ZIP type, and validation runs "down to the secondary level, including apartment and suite numbers". |
| 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 | Nothing: no history row and no log line carrying the address, only a hashed 7-day marker that makes a repeat free. Bulk input lists and result files are deleted with the job after 30 days. | not on the pages read |

## When Smarty 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.

- Answers the delivery-point questions licensed postal data can answer: DPV, RDI and vacancy
- Validates to the secondary level, so an apartment or suite number is checked rather than ignored
- ZIP9 and rooftop precise geocodes are listed on the plan
- A 42-day, 1,000-lookup trial with no card

## 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.

- Smarty 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 exists is a match in a country's own address register, and it is null wherever the register covers only part of the country — the US National Address Database is one of those
- Smarty's page prices the United States; Spaw reads 206 countries against their own postal formats, with registers installed for six of them
- Smarty sells annual lookup bundles; Spaw sells credits that never expire, and an address that cannot stand as written costs nothing

## 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 covers only part of it, exists answers null — not evaluated — rather than a verdict, and the not_in_register weight cannot fire. Smarty does not publish how it bills them.

**Can I move an address list from Smarty 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 the 45 answer columns, 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 10 free credits at the start of each month with no card on file, and unused credits accumulate. Smarty offers: A free trial rather than a standing tier: "42 days" and "1,000 address lookups", "No credit card required".

## Sources (checked 2026-09-10)

- [Smarty US address verification pricing](https://www.smarty.com/pricing/us-address-verification)

Smarty is a trademark of its owner. Spaw is not affiliated with it.

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