USPS Address Verification validates and corrects US mailing addresses following the USPS Coding Accuracy Support System (CASS) standards.
Address verification against the USPS database confirms address mailability, reduces shipping costs, decreases lost or returned mail, and speeds delivery.
the usps is a good source for verifying addresses, but the postal service also has several unique limits that may prevent you from using them.
We will cover various limits with USPS Terms of Service, Address Coverage, Downtime, Metadata, Rate Limiting and other things you need to know.
If you find that the USPS address validation options are not adequate, don’t worry, we have capable tools that provide more flexibility.
Try them here:
In this article, we’ll cover:
- why usps address validation?
- how to validate an address with the usps address lookup tool
- understand the output of usps, dpv and lacslink®
- benefits of using address verification usps postal addresses tool
- 6 cons of usps address verification
- conclusion
why usps address validation?
usps address validation tells you that the US mailing addresses you’re shipping to are real and can be mailed. many factors get in the way of knowing if addresses will work for your purposes. ZIP code changes, new construction, and annexation all play a role. even human error in typing addresses creates problems.
- the usps creates 10-20 new zip codes each year, and it takes up to 5 years for people to fully use new zip codes.
- Individual +4 zip codes can change up to once a month, as the 4 pluses relate to the number of employees a post office has, changing coverage areas, new construction, etc.
- Estimates say that between 4.7% and 8.4% of the time customers fill out an online form or enter their data, they make a mistake. depending on how extensive your database is, there could be many bad addresses.
Address verification is an essential step if you want your mail to get to the right destination on the first try without losing packages or getting bounced mail.
The most obvious answer to this challenge is to use the USPS Address Verification Web Tool to clean up your list of mailing addresses. USPS address verification is free, but you may find other solutions that better fit your needs.
First, let’s talk about how to use the usps address verification tool. We’ll also cover the key pros and cons of the service. This article covers the USPS address verification web tools, but we also cover the USPS address verification APIs in depth here.
how to validate an address with the usps address lookup tool
Even if you are confident in the quality of your address list, you should verify your address details within 12 months of submission. otherwise, you will not qualify for business preclassified mail rates. We suggest checking addresses within a month before shipping, as USPS data is updated monthly.
the usps offers a free tool on its website to look up zip codes by entering addresses one at a time. Here’s how to validate an address with USPS and understand the results:
- Visit the USPS ZIP Code Lookup Page
- The minimum data the USPS Address Verification Tool permits are the street address, city, and state. If needed, the fields labeled for Apartment/Suite and ZIP Code can be left blank.
- If known, add the ZIP Code and the Apartment / Suite if applicable since it will improve the probability that the USPS address lookup tool will find the correct address.
- Click “Find”
- The tool will then run your address lookup against the USPS official address database to attempt to find a match.
- Depending on what you entered, USPS will show you:
- a list of addresses when the tool identifies multiple valid matching addresses:
- a single fully enumerated address including ZIP+4 Code if the tool finds one matching address. The address will also display in the official USPS standardized format:
- an incomplete address missing the +4 Code. The missing +4 Code means the tool could only find a partial match. E.g., USPS successfully found the city and state but failed to find the building or house number:
the dpv confirmation indicator of “y” is the answer you most want, as it means that it is the most accurate address for a delivery location offered by the usps.
A dpv confirmation flag of “d” is almost as good as it indicates an address that is valid and can be shipped, but it also indicates that there may be a valid secondary address number (suites, apartments, units, etc. .) missing from your input.
The “d” flag indicates that the address may require a manual review to confirm that the address does not require an apartment, suite, or unit number. the ‘d’ flag has prevented the loss of many packets. sending to an address with the dpv confirmation indicator “d” usually means that your mail arrives in the lobby of a building rather than in a particular apartment or suite.
Sending to an address with the dpv confirmation indicator “d” usually means that your mail arrives at the lobby of a building rather than at a particular apartment or suite.
Note: The USPS address verification process does not confirm that a person or business works or lives at a specific address. instead, the verification process confirms that an address exists and can receive mail.
understanding usps output
As noted in step 7 above, if you click the “⌄” icon, you can expand the results and get up to 14 points of additional metadata.
Looking at this output provided by the USPS Address Validation Tool, you may be wondering what “lac”, “elot”, and “dpv confirmation flag” actually are and what they are used for. while some metadata points are not relevant or important to most users, we will briefly explain a few useful ones.
delivery point validation
Delivery Point Validation™ (DPV®) is a form of address validation designed by the USPS to ensure that an address can receive mail.
A drop-off point can be a post office box, a mailbox on an aircraft carrier, or a curbside mailbox. it can also be a mail slot at the front door or a group mailbox in a subdivision, whatever the final intended destination of a letter or package. delivery points are not postal addresses. a single street address can have multiple delivery points, such as individual units in apartment or office buildings.
To identify drop-off points individually, the USPS gives each one a unique 11-digit number, made up of the drop-off point’s nine-digit zip+4 code plus two additional digits that limit the drop-off point designation per se. the 11-digit number is the delivery point code (dpc).
An address with a valid zip+4 code but without a valid dpc can identify an unused building, a building that doesn’t exist, or a vacant lot. Knowing how a valid delivery point differs from a valid address makes USPS output easier to understand.
lacquers and lacslink®
another metadata point that appears is lac™.
addresses are occasionally renamed or numbered. many rural addresses have been updated with modern, easy-to-find city street addresses to aid 911 emergency response teams. or sometimes a city may change a street name to edit an insensitive street name or honor influential local citizens.
For example, in 2010, Minneapolis renamed a portion of 3rd Avenue North near Target Field to “Twins Way.”
To keep track of these changes, the USPS has a system called lacs to keep track of these changes.
lacs (Locatable Address Conversion System) is a secure dataset of converted country-style addresses to urban-style addresses that primarily arise from the implementation of the e911 system. also contains existing renamed or numbered city-style addresses.
lacslink® exists as a link between usps address tools to compare addresses to the lacs dataset.
your metadata results will tell you if the address was compared to lacslink®.
for example, enter:
the usps zip code lookup will return:
We know what you’re thinking. Either we put a typo in this article, or the USPS is returning a different address than the one you entered!
but when you expand your results, you will see an “l” below the lac. the “l” indicates that the returned address “5257 n” is the updated matching version of the entered address “2737 n” found in the lac database and that “5257 n” is the most correct version of the address.
Since these are mostly rural addresses updated to match a more conventional city address format, you may not often find this type of address if you only validate a few addresses.
If you’re cleaning several thousand addresses in your database or preparing a mass mailing, you’ll see it appear much more frequently.
benefits of using the usps mailing address verification tool
If you only need to use an address checker to verify USPS addresses occasionally, the USPS Zip Code Lookup Tool works to validate USPS postal addresses one at a time. it is quite easy to use, free and requires no configuration.
The tool also returns addresses in USPS standardized format. While this may look slightly different than what you originally entered, using the USPS standardized street address format ensures your mailings are processed smoothly and without delay.
With a little more work, developers can also integrate the USPS Web Tools® APIs into a website or shipping application for free.
6 Disadvantages of Using the USPS Postal Address Verification Tool
It’s great that USPS offers all of these address validation options for free. but, you guessed it, there is a catch. there are actually 6.
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slow user experience
if you want to get a full address, paste it into the usps address verification tool, press enter and see if your address is valid, you will be disappointed.
USPS requires that you enter each part of the address in a separate field. after pressing the “search” button, you go to a new page with the results and click on the “⌄” icon to see the full result. then you need to click another button if you need to make changes to the entered address or enter a new address.
The process isn’t too bad if you’re doing some mailing, but it gets painful around the 7th and excruciating around the 14th.
smarty offers usps address verification via single field entry. the response is displayed on the same page, making it easy to update or enter the next address.
even if you use the usps api for address verification you are still limited to no more than 5 addresses per second which is slow considering other services can efficiently process 1000x that amount in the same weather.
without autocomplete address
Keeping a clean address database starts at the very beginning, when you first enter an address. autocomplete prevents malformed data from reaching your database by only recommending valid addresses as the user types.
Unfortunately, the address verification tools offered by the USPS do not include an autocomplete feature, which means:
- address will take longer to enter
- address is more likely to contain typos
- address is more likely to have missing components
- an extra step will be needed to confirm the address
Suppose you are providing an online form for customers to enter address data. In that case, you’ll need to integrate smarty’s us address autocomplete into your forms to avoid user typing errors and reduce friction for your customer.
Learn more about what to look for in an address autocomplete service.
more than 15 million US addresses are missing
The United States Postal Service database contains 160 million postal addresses in the United States.
But did you know that there are more than 15 million non-postal addresses? Only private carriers such as FedEx, UPS, and DHL service these valid addresses. You could lose millions of valid customer addresses if you just query the USPS database. To validate non-postal addresses, you’ll need to look beyond the APIs offered by the USPS.
no international data
As its name implies, the USPS is the United States Postal Service. Although you can use the USPS to ship a package to an international location, the USPS does not offer any services to verify, validate, standardize, or parse international addresses.
If you need international address verification for any other country, you’ll need another solution.
no useful metadata
remember when we talked about dpv, lacslink and the other metadata you can get from the usps address validator?
Not to be confused with the metaverse, metadata is data about data. it is like the key to a map: it explains all the lines, dots, and other symbols. metadata helps you classify and catalog information. The more metadata you have, the more you know about your original data or objects, and the faster you can draw conclusions or analyze data.
usps web tools can return the following data points:
us smart address verification. uu. returns all previous usps data points plus the following:
With each address validated, smarty can provide up to 45 points of metadata to enrich your data. that’s a lot more information to provide better and faster services.
strict terms of service (tos)
yes, those things that nobody reads but checks the box saying they have read. In this case, any business that plans to rely on USPS services should see at least this statement from the USPS Web Tools User Guide:
address validation api’s can be used in conjunction with usps mail or shipping services only.
address api should only be used on single transactions, i.e. not batching or cleaning a database, but when a customer enters information into a form on a site Web.
Failure to comply with these terms and conditions may result in termination of access to the USPS API without notice.”
here are some everyday use cases not allowed by the above usps statement:
- want to clean your database of 1 billion, 1 million or 100 addresses with usps? sorry, usps gives a resounding “no”.
- want to run a quick batch of 20 addresses? no, that goes against the usps too.
- Want to make sure the address is valid before shipping a package with ups since you recently discovered that the ups validator doesn’t check building or unit numbers? unfortunately the usps cough locks you out again.
the terms of use state that usps web services are to be used exclusively for usps shipping or mail services.
the terms also state that there is no service level agreement (sla). A service level agreement is a commitment between a service provider like USPS and a customer that guarantees a minimum level of service.
Without an SLA, the USPS literally makes no promises.
You can programmatically access the usps address validation tools through a set of apis. We discuss the pros and cons of the USPS Address Verification APIs here.
conclusion
USPS offers a good set of tools and resources that are free to use. Depending on your needs, address verification offered by USPS may be just what you need.
we discuss all the capabilities and limitations of usps address verification and how smarty compares. here’s a quick reference guide:
yes. The address verification tools offered by the USPS are free and easy to use, but they do have limitations. only you can determine if these limitations are a deciding factor.
If you’re looking for a long-term solution with the power and features you need to make the most of your address data and help you maintain a clean database, Smart Address Verification from us might be just what you need. .
with smarty address verification, you get the fastest and most accurate single address verification, bulk address validation, and address validation APIs on the planet. you will benefit from:
- improved address matching
- all addresses in the usps database
- over 15 million non-postal addresses
- data of standardized addresses
- additional metadata
- excellent documentation
- blazing-fast speeds
- legendary support
Check out the demo on our site or sign up for a 30-day free trial.
- a list of addresses when the tool identifies multiple valid matching addresses: