US Postal: Getting a List of ZIP Codes in US

[dduardo]

Why does the United States Postal Service guard ZIP Codes so closely? I'm trying to get an up to date list of all the zip codes in the country, but they are making it very difficult to obtain the information. Does anyone have a recent list or know where to get the list for free?

 

[The_Professional]

Hope this answers your question

http://www.downloadzipcode.com/

 

[tribdog]

85201-mesa, arizona

 

[dduardo]

The Professional, I saw that site, but now I have to write a program to strip all the information. They don't want to just give you a comma delimited file because they want to sell it to you. The government should make it easy for its citizens to obtain this information. Where did this website get the information?

 

[Evo]

The Professional, I saw that site, but now I have to write a program to strip all the information. They don't want to just give you a comma delimited file because they want to sell it to you. The government should make it easy for its citizens to obtain this information. Where did this website get the information?

dduardo, the US postal service provides free zipcode look up by address or city which are the only ways a normal citizen would ever need to find a zip code. If you have the zipcode and want to see what city it's in, they provide free lookups that way. Anyone wanting a comprehensive list of all zipcodes is more than likely doing it for marketing reasons, which is a business service provided by the postal service for a small fee.

 

[Astronuc]

One could write an Excel macro to read the ZipCode data into a spreadsheet, or one could copy data manually and use a text editor like TextPad, which enables one to manually manipulate large text files or one can write macros with TextPad.

 

[dduardo]

The reason I need this information is to validate address information for a website. I could use USPS' xml web service, but if their site is down, I would like to have a backup system that can check the addresses from a local database.

Ok, well I guess I'll just have to write a zipcode/city scrapper then.

 

[The_Professional]

dduardo, the US postal service provides free zipcode look up by address or city which are the only ways a normal citizen would ever need to find a zip code. If you have the zipcode and want to see what city it's in, they provide free lookups that way.

I believe what he's looking for is a comprehensive list of all the zip codes in the country. The USPS website does not provide it, but rather a search feature where you have to enter a state and search it one by one.

The Professional, I saw that site, but now I have to write a program to strip all the information. They don't want to just give you a comma delimited file because they want to sell it to you. The government should make it easy for its citizens to obtain this information. Where did this website get the information?

That sounds very, very tedious! Frankly, I don't know how they got all the information

 

[Astronuc]

USPS has a large database, i.e they have exactly the file that you want, but they will not give it away for free.

dduardo - you might consider simply buying the dataset for month ($59.95) - http://www.areacodeworld.com/zipcodegold.htm

I am sure that is would save a lot of time.

Product Summary: ZIPCodeWorld™ United States Gold Edition - The database includes ZIP code, city name, alias city name, state code, phone area code, city type, county name, country FIPS, time zone, day light saving flag, latitude, longitude, county elevation, Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), Primary Metropolitan Statistical Area (PMSA), Core Based Statistical Area (CBSA) and Census 2000 data in United States. The complete database contains over 76,000 precise records.

Probably more than you want.