ZIP Code Database Alternatives (free & low-cost)

Navigating the low-end Market

Here's some tips:

Watch for claims that fail to give a source (“#1 rated”, “award winning”, “world's leading”). Requesting the claim's source is often a good way to uncover questionable suppliers

Don't trust ZIP Code review sites pretending to be unbiased. We know of no legitimate independent reviewers of ZIP Code data products to-date

Determine when the data was last updated and the update schedule

Review comments from independent forums (exam. stackoverflow.com)

Download sample data and spot check

Examine refund policies

Critical Considerations

Be aware that Census data does not have every ZIP Code (only for General Delivery). This misses a large percentage of the ZIPs.

Census data is only accurate to the decade.

The census bureau uses a ZCTA code (which is ZIP Code like, but not exact as illustrated below) – see census.gov/ZCTA

Be particularly wary of using old data. ZIP Codes change a great deal every month.

If a ZIP Code boundary covers more than one city, determine if you need each city listed (~57,000 separate records) -OR- if you only need the primary city for each ZIP Code (normally around 43,000+ records). Most locators and address validation applications need the former (57k recs).

Most low-end latitude and longitude centroids are based on geometric calculations which often fall in the middle of forestry land, large lakes, parks (e.g. Central Park) where no people live for many miles. According to your needs, that may be fine. If you need more precise population based latitude / longitude, you will probably need higher-end commercial data like our ZIP Codes with Lat/Lon.

Informative Resources

Although we do believebusinesses will yield a greater return on investment by choosing a superior product , we understand not every purpose requires the highest level of quality. The following is to arm you with some basic information when making a comparison. As you will see, one "ZIP Code database" is dramatically different from another according to its purpose, source, and verification process.You can buy repackaged USPS ZIP Code data from several sources for under $50 and often can get census data for free. When choosing, it’s good to have some familiarity.Some free or low-end ZIP Code data is derived from Census data.Others use straight USPS data. Free or low-end data offerings usually can’t bear the overhead of extensive data cleansing (and USPS data is not clean). If that is acceptable in your case, lets focus on other things to look-out for: