Does usps provide free zip code database download

The Basic free database will meet many users needs. You may want to purchase the Pro or Comprehensive versions if: You need data for infrequently-used zip codes that are unique to businesses, used for P. You need demographic data such as age, race, education or income. You don't want to attribute your use of our data on a public-facing website. A centroid is the average position of all of the points in a shape.

This is best way to convert an area into a point. For zip codes that represent discrete points, we've used authoritative sources such as the National Weather Service to geocode them into latitude and longitude. Why don't latitude and longitude coordinates exist for some zip codes? Some zip codes, such as those used by the military, do not represent a discrete point or a ZCTA area.

In these cases, it's not possible to convert a zip code to a geographical point. Am I allowed to redistribute the database if I purchase a paid license? You are not allowed to sell the database or make it publicly available. However, you can make copies and backups of the data. You are also allowed to query the database to power publicly facing applications such as a store locator.

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The Census Bureau and many other commercial services will try to interpolate the data to create polygons shapes using straight lines to represent the approximate area covered by a ZIP code, but none of these maps are official or entirely accurate.

They provide a very close approximation of the area covered by a ZIP code. You can easily notice some of the boundary issues when viewing our maps. Very rural areas aren't labeled as belonging to a ZIP code such as much of Nevada and Utah where there are few, if any, addresses to deliver mail. If the address is on the same street as a ZIP code boundary on the map, be sure to search for the full street address to determine the ZIP code instead of relying on the map.

Their purpose is to convey statistical data about regions that are familiar to most citizens. As discussed above, it is difficult to precisely define a geographic area covered by a ZIP code. ZCTAs were developed to account for some of the difficulties in assigning an area to a ZIP code and to precisely define a geographic area.

In general, they are updated once every 10 years for the Census. The Census assigns an area to a ZCTA according to census blocks the smallest geographic unit used by the census.

An overview and samples of the data included in each edition of the database are included at the top of this page. Click here for a full description of each column in the various spreadsheets. We also provide a multitude of statistics that are derived from our data sources that save our customers time and money deriving these statistics. As an example, you don't have to know the formula or gather the data to calculate the population center of a ZIP code from the populations and coordinates of hundreds of blocks.

We've done it for you. For the source of any particular data point, see our sources here. ZIP codes are designed to aid mail delivery - not to match conventional boundaries. ZIP codes can be entirely within, entirely outside of, or partially within a city or county. Over ZIP codes even cross state lines.

It's also a misconception that the "city" and ZIP you use to address an envelope denotes whether an address lies within city limits. That "city" is usually the name of the main post office in the area. Click here to see examples and understand why. The county with the largest percentage of the ZIP population is also included in every edition.

The following article demonstrates how to more effectively use the U. Wilson, Ron and Din, Alexander, In this article, calls for service from New York City's Open Data Portal are estimated at the county-level and census tract-level. This article also includes an accuracy analysis. Din, Alexander and Wilson, Ron, There are six types of crosswalk files available for download.

It is important to note that the relationship between the two types of crosswalk files is not a perfectly inverse one. For that you would have to use the Tract to ZIP crosswalk file.

In these files the denominators used to calculate the address ratios are the ZIP code totals. All three files share an identical structure with the exception of the geographic codes in the second column, which differs between the three crosswalk files — tract, county, and CBSA — respectively.