The open data behind an address answer

Address registers, country by country

Each register is the publisher’s own file, installed here and cited by name and version in every answer it settles. Coverage is the publisher’s claim, except where a row says it is marked here: Spaw marks a register partial where its copy cannot vouch for an address it lacks, and the notes below say why. Complete means it lists every address in its area, so an address it lacks can be answered as absent; partial means absence proves nothing. The counts and versions are read live from the sync ledger.

What each declared coverage means

• Geocoded National Address File (G-NAF) (Australia, complete). The end user licence forbids using the file to build a mailing list or send unsolicited mail; an address is checked against it, never listed from it.
• BeST Address — Brussels (Belgium — Brussels, complete). Complete for its region; the three regional files together are the country.
• BeST Address — Flanders (Belgium — Flanders, complete). Complete for its region; the three regional files together are the country.
• BeST Address — Wallonia (Belgium — Wallonia, complete). Complete for its region; the three regional files together are the country.
• Cadastro Nacional de Endereços para Fins Estatísticos (CNEFE) (Brazil, partial). Marked partial here because it is the address list of the 2022 census, a snapshot rather than a maintained register. A building finished since the census is absent, so absence is never read as 'not there'. 27 of its 27 files are installed here.
• Danmarks Adresseregister (DAR) (Denmark, partial). Marked partial here because its copy is no longer refreshed. The copy was taken on 26 September 2026 through DAWA, the address web API Klimadatastyrelsen closed on 1 October 2026, so an address created since then is not in it, and until the register is read from its new distribution an address it lacks is never answered as absent. Denmark only: Greenland and the Faroe Islands keep registers of their own.
• Base Adresse Nationale (France, partial). Built from the address lists communes publish themselves: on 22 September 2026 the publisher counted 28,632 of France's 35,011 communes with a list of their own, the source of 23.03 million of the 26.1 million addresses it holds, so an address it lacks may sit in a commune whose list is incomplete.
• Adressen Berlin (Germany — Berlin, partial). Marked partial here because it covers one Land, and Germany has no national address register. An address it does not hold, in Berlin or anywhere else in Germany, is never answered as absent.
• Gebäudereferenzen NRW (Germany — North Rhine-Westphalia, partial). Marked partial here because it covers one Land, and Germany has no national address register. The open product carries no postcode, so a building is matched through the town written.
• Hauskoordinaten Rheinland-Pfalz (Germany — Rhineland-Palatinate, partial). Marked partial here because it covers one Land, and Germany has no national address register. The open product carries no postcode, so a building is matched through the town written.
• OS Open Names (Great Britain, partial). Marked partial here because it files each road under one postcode district, though a long road runs through several. Every named and numbered road in Great Britain is in it, as a street: it lists no buildings. A street missing from a district may be filed under a neighbouring one, so it is never denied.
• Official directory of building addresses (Switzerland, complete). The 26 cantons. The file holds no Liechtenstein row, so Liechtenstein is not covered by it.
• National Address Database (United States, partial). States and local governments contribute their address points voluntarily, so an address it lacks may sit in a part that was never shared.
• TIGER/Line address ranges (United States, partial). Marked partial here because not every road edge carries a range, and a street on a ZIP boundary can carry only its neighbour's ZIP. A street it does not know is never denied.

The credits these licences ask for

• Incorporates or developed using G-NAF © Geoscape Australia, licensed by the Commonwealth of Australia under the Open Geo-coded National Address File (G-NAF) End User Licence Agreement (CC BY 4.0; not for mailing lists)
• © Österreichisches Adressregister, Stichtagsdaten vom 01.10.2026
• BeST Address — Brussels (CIRB/paradigm.brussels via FPS BOSA), CC BY 4.0
• BeST Address — Flanders (Digitaal Vlaanderen via FPS BOSA), CC BY 4.0
• BeST Address — Wallonia (Service public de Wallonie via FPS BOSA), CC BY 4.0
• IBGE, Cadastro Nacional de Endereços para Fins Estatísticos (CNEFE), Censo Demográfico 2022 — dados públicos, fonte citada
• Český úřad zeměměřický a katastrální (ČÚZK), CC BY 4.0
• Danmarks Adresseregister (DAR), Klimadatastyrelsen, CC BY 4.0
• Base Adresse Nationale (IGN/DINUM), Licence Ouverte 2.0
• Geoportal Berlin / Adressen Berlin, Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Datenlizenz Deutschland – Zero – Version 2.0 (dl-de/zero-2-0)
• Gebäudereferenzen NRW, Geobasis NRW (Bezirksregierung Köln), Datenlizenz Deutschland – Zero – Version 2.0 (dl-de/zero-2-0)
• © GeoBasis-DE / LVermGeoRP, Landesamt für Vermessung und Geobasisinformation Rheinland-Pfalz, Datenlizenz Deutschland – Namensnennung – Version 2.0 (dl-de/by-2-0)
• Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026, Open Government Licence v3.0.
• Valsts adrešu reģistrs, Valsts zemes dienests (Latvia), CC BY 4.0
• BD-Adresses, Administration du cadastre et de la topographie (Luxembourg), CC0
• Basisregistratie Adressen en Gebouwen (BAG), Kadaster, CC0 1.0
• Matrikkelen – Adresse, Kartverket, CC BY 4.0
• Official directory of building addresses, © swisstopo
• U.S. Department of Transportation, National Address Database (public domain; not a mailing list)
• U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/Line (public domain)

Postcode directories

A directory settles whether a postcode exists and where its centroid is. Only a copy that reaches the postal operator’s published total may say a code does not exist; every other one confirms what it holds and denies nothing.

• ONS Postcode Directory. Every postcode issued in Great Britain, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, live and terminated, with the month each was introduced and terminated. Northern Ireland's BT postcodes are excluded: reusing them needs a Land & Property Services licence.
• GeoNames postal codes. The national postal services' current codes for about a hundred countries in one file. GeoNames lists current codes only, so it never says a code was retired.

Great Britain’s postcodes in numbers counts the British directory month by month and area by area.

Reference data behind the town and region checks

Beside the registers and directories, a lookup reads these to decide whether a town or a region written on an address is the postcode’s. What is used from them names places, never an address.

• GeoNames cities. Places of 15,000 people or more. A name is compared inside one country and only with the postcode's own places or the name of a one-city region, never with a neighbouring postcode's, and a town's only where the postcode lies within 30 km of the place. A name the directory also lists as a town of its own more than 30 km from the place counts only as the place's own name cut short (Biberach for Biberach an der Riß), so Perlin, a village near Schwerin that the file lists among Berlin's names, does not count for a Berlin code. A name that another listed place of the country also carries is left out, and so are airport codes.
• Residential Property Price Register. The register as last updated on 23 September 2026, read on 24 September 2026: 250,671 of its 807,724 residential sales carry an Eircode, and a county counts for a routing key once it holds at least ten of that key's sales. Only that derived table ships with the code; no sale, address or price is held here. The national file is re-used under the PSRA's terms for the re-use of public sector information (last updated 29 July 2022), which ask for the source and the PSRA's copyright to be acknowledged; data.gov.ie lists only the register's Dublin extract, under CC BY 4.0. The register's download page links those terms as its Re-Use of Information. Source.

Company registers and mailbox operators

• 9,520,222 addresses compiled from 8 open company registers (United Kingdom, United States, France, Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, Réunion, St. Pierre & Miquelon, Mayotte, St. Barthélemy, St. Martin, Wallis & Futuna, French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Norway), version 2026-10-01. They answer how many companies give an address as their registered office — a fact about a public register and a place, never about a person.
• 9,762 branch addresses published by 6 mailbox operators themselves (United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland). They back the mail-drop flag, and an answer names the operator that matched.

What is not held here

Licensed, and not held

• Royal Mail Postcode Address File (PAF) (United Kingdom). Every full list of British addresses derives from it and reusing it needs a licence, so a British address never answers exists from open data, and the addresses at a postcode are not listed.
• Northern Ireland postcodes (BT) (United Kingdom). Left out of the ONS directory installed here, because reusing them needs a Land & Property Services licence, so the directory holds no BT postcode and an address carrying one is answered as though no directory were installed: postcode_status null, never postcode_not_found.
• The postal service's delivery point data (United States). Whether post is delivered, and the postal service's own agency, vacant and residential flags, are licensed; those fields answer not checked rather than a guess.

Published elsewhere, not installed here

Address lists these publishers make available, as the publishers describe them. None is installed on this server, so an address there is checked against its format and, where one is installed, a postcode directory. Their terms have not been assessed here.

• Canada:National Address Register, Statistics Canada — a list of commercial and residential addresses in Canada that are extracted from Statistics Canada's Building Register and deemed non-confidential, released semi-annually. Checked on 2026-09-22.
• Estonia:Aadressiandmete süsteem (ADS), Maa- ja Ruumiamet — the central address data system, offered as downloadable extracts and as map services. Checked on 2026-09-22.
• Spain:CartoCiudad, Ministerio de Transportes y Movilidad Sostenible — postal addresses and postcodes among its data, downloadable through the National Geographic Centre. Checked on 2026-09-22.

Common questions about the address data

What does complete coverage mean?

That the publisher says its register lists every address in its country or region. Spaw marks a register partial anyway where its copy cannot vouch for an address it lacks, and this page says which and why. Only a complete register can answer an address missing from it exists: false. A partial register confirms what it holds and denies nothing: an address it lacks is answered null, not evaluated, and adds nothing to the risk score.

Why is my country not in the table?

A country appears only when a register covering it is installed on this server. Everywhere else an address is still checked against its country’s format and, where one is installed, a postcode directory; the answer names every dataset it used, so it never implies a register that was not there.

Can I download the registers from here?

No. Nothing on this page republishes an address. Each row links the publisher, whose own page is where the file and its licence live; an answer only cites the dataset and the version it was checked against.

Does any of this say who lives at an address?

No. The registers list places — buildings, streets and postcodes — and the company and mailbox counts are facts about a public register and a place. No field says who lives or works anywhere, and a lookup against these datasets is not stored.

Check an address against these datasets on the address checker, or read which field each dataset settles in the address verification guide.

Data synced on 2026-10-17: the newest register, postcode directory, company address or mail-drop install on this server.