What does an SN38 postcode tell you?

That the address lies in the SN38 district of the SN (Swindon) postcode area, and the place OS Open Names most often lists first for its postcodes is Swindon. The district alone does not place a street: the inward half of the full postcode narrows the address to one of the district's 124 live postcodes.

SN38 postcode district

SN38, in the SN (Swindon) postcode area, has 124 live and 168 terminated postcodes in the ONS Postcode Directory of August 2026, and OS Open Names files 1 road under it.

postcode area	SN (Swindon)
live postcodes	124
terminated postcodes	168
sectors	10
roads listed	1
companies registered	34
centroid	51.56314, -1.80993
directory release	2026-08

Postcodes and sectors

124 of the district's 292 postcodes are live in the ONS Postcode Directory of August 2026. A postcode directory says whether a code is in use, never who is there. The live postcodes centre on 51.56314, -1.80993, which locates the district, not a building.

sector	live	terminated
SN38 0	2	1
SN38 1	81	45
SN38 2	10	21
SN38 3	8	12
SN38 4	10	4
SN38 5	3	5
SN38 6	3	4
SN38 7	2	56
SN38 8	4	8
SN38 9	1	12

Companies registered in SN38

Companies House lists 34 companies with a registered office in SN38 (1 October 2026 snapshot).

Places OS Open Names lists for SN38

Swindon
South West

Roads filed under SN38

Named roads first, then numbered ones. A road is filed under one district even where it runs through several, so a street missing here may be listed under a neighbouring district — which is why the address lookup never calls a British street absent. Great Britain has no open register of buildings, so a listed road never means a building on it exists.

Pipers Way

Check an address in SN38

The same road list through the API, from the outward code alone:

curl "https://spaw.co/api/v1/address/streets?country=GB&postal_code=SN38" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPAW_KEY"

Common questions about SN38

What does an SN38 postcode tell you?: That the address lies in the SN38 district of the SN (Swindon) postcode area, and the place OS Open Names most often lists first for its postcodes is Swindon. The district alone does not place a street: the inward half of the full postcode narrows the address to one of the district's 124 live postcodes.

Where the counts come from

ons-postcode-directory · version 2026-08 · Contains ONS, OS and Royal Mail data © Crown copyright and database right 2026, Open Government Licence v3.0. Northern Ireland postcodes are excluded: their reuse needs a Land & Property Services licence.
os-open-names · version 2026-11-01 · Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026, Open Government Licence v3.0.
uk-companies-house · version 2026-10-01 · Companies House free company data product, Open Government Licence v3.0

What each figure means, and what a district page never says, is set out in Reading a British postcode district page; the glossary defines a postcode district, a postcode area, a postcode directory and a street register.

Data synced on 2026-11-01: the newest version among the datasets listed above.

Districts nearest SN38

SN11.9 km
SN52.1 km
SN22.5 km
SN253.9 km
SN44.0 km
SN34.5 km
SN265.9 km
SN68.1 km
GL717.5 km
SN1119.0 km
SN719.3 km
SN819.4 km
Every district
How a British address is written
Check any address

distance between the districts' centroids

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