# Delivery point

A delivery point is the smallest unit a postal service delivers to: one letterbox, one door, one box at a counter.

Date: 2026-09-10

A delivery point is the smallest unit a postal service delivers to: one letterbox, one door, one box at a counter. An address names a delivery point; a building may contain hundreds of them.

## What Spaw answers

`address_type` names the kind of delivery point an address describes, in one of nine values: `street`, `po_box`, `private_mailbox`, `general_delivery`, `rural_route`, `military`, `parcel_locker`, `bulk_mail` or `unknown`. `address_type_source` says what settled it — `address_rules` when the operator's own naming conventions did.

Four of the nine carry weight on the risk score: a private mailbox +60, general delivery +40, a PO box +30 (zero in the nine countries where a box is the ordinary way to receive mail) and bulk mail +20. None of them is a fault. They are all real delivery points that a postal service serves; the weights exist because a parcel courier, a KYC check and a marketing list want different things from an address.

## What the field is not

It is not a deliverability answer. Whether post actually arrives at a delivery point is a licensed check that this service does not run: `deliverability_checked` answers false and `is_deliverable` stays null rather than guessing.

And nothing in an address answer says who is behind the letterbox. The product is about places.

Reference: https://spaw.co/glossary/delivery-point