--- title: "What's My Postcode? Find Your Postcode From Your Location" description: "Find the postcode where you are in one tap, with your nearest address, council and ward. Official UK postcode data, plus postcodes across Europe. Free." url: https://getmylocations.com/whats-my-postcode --- Free Tool · UK & Europe # What’s my postcode? Find it from where you are Press one button to see the **postcode for your current location**, with the **nearest address, council, ward, and parliamentary constituency**. UK postcodes come from the official Office for National Statistics directory; elsewhere in Europe the tool uses OpenStreetMap. You can also type an address, check a postcode someone gave you, or click any point on the map. Free, no signup. ## Find the postcode where you are Click anywhere on the map to get the postcode at that spot. ## How the tool finds your postcode Your browser asks your device for its position, which on a phone usually comes from GPS and Wi-Fi and is accurate to a few meters outdoors. In Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the tool then asks [postcodes.io](https://postcodes.io), a free service built on the Office for National Statistics Postcode Directory, for the postcode whose centre point is nearest to you. Every UK postcode has one representative point placed among its addresses. At the same time, OpenStreetMap’s Nominatim service returns the nearest street address, so you can check the result against your own front door. Outside the UK there is no equivalent open, official directory for most countries, so the postcode comes from the address OpenStreetMap holds for that spot. Either way, only the coordinates are sent to those two services for the lookup; nothing is stored by this site. See the [Privacy Policy](https://getmylocations.com/privacy-policy) for details. ## How a UK postcode is built Royal Mail’s address file holds around 1.8 million postcodes. Each one covers about 15 addresses on average, and an ordinary postcode never covers more than 100 delivery points. Every postcode narrows down in four steps, which the tool shows under each result. Taking `SW1A 2AA`: | Part | Example | What it identifies | | --- | --- | --- | | Area | SW | One or two letters for a large region, usually named after a main town or, in London, a compass direction (South Western). | | District | SW1A | The whole first half, called the outward code, which takes mail to the right delivery office. | | Sector | SW1A 2 | The district plus the first digit of the second half: a few streets or a neighbourhood. | | Unit | SW1A 2AA | The full postcode: one side of a street, a block of flats, or a single large organisation. | The second half, the inward code, is always a digit followed by two letters, which is why a missing space rarely matters but a swapped letter does. Organisations that receive a lot of post can have a postcode of their own. ## Why the postcode shown might not be yours - **You are near a postcode boundary.** Postcode areas follow streets and buildings, not circles, so the nearest centre point can belong to the house opposite or the next road. - **Your location fix is rough.** Indoors, or on a laptop without GPS, your position can be 50 m or more out. The tool warns you when your device reports low accuracy. - **You live in a large building or estate.** A block of flats, a hospital, or a university campus can have several postcodes, one per entrance or department. - **The property is new.** Brand-new homes have no postcode until the council has named the street and Royal Mail has allocated one. The fix is the same each time: click your exact building on the map, or type your street address, and the tool looks up the postcode for that spot instead. ## Check a postcode, including retired ones Type a full UK postcode, with or without the space, and the tool shows where it is and which council, ward, and constituency it belongs to. If a form has rejected a postcode you are sure is right, it may have been retired: Royal Mail withdraws postcodes when streets are rebuilt or renumbered. For example, `E1W 1UU` in east London was retired in 2015. The tool recognises retired postcodes and tells you the year, so you know to look up the one in use now. ## Postcodes elsewhere in Europe - **Germany, France, Spain, Italy:** five digits, for example `10117` for central Berlin or `75007` for the area around the Eiffel Tower. One code usually covers a whole district of a city or several villages, so it says much less about an exact address than a UK postcode does. - **Netherlands:** four digits and two letters (Dam Square in Amsterdam is `1012 NP`), precise to a street or part of one, much like a UK postcode. - **Ireland:** Eircodes, introduced in 2015, are unique to every address. They are not in open data, so for Ireland the tool shows the address and links to the official Eircode finder. ## Frequently asked questions How do I find out what my postcode is? Press "Find my postcode" and allow location access. The tool reads your position from your device and looks up the postcode there. If you are indoors and the result looks like a neighbour's, click your own building on the map, or type your street address into the search box instead. Your postcode is also printed on any letter or parcel delivered to your address, on council tax bills, and on utility bills. Is the postcode shown always correct? In the UK the postcode list itself is official, but the tool has to pick the postcode nearest to your position, and postcode areas are irregular shapes, not circles. If you live near the edge of one, the nearest centre point can belong to the next street. Check the nearest address shown with the result; if it is not your building, click your building on the map. Why does a website say my postcode is invalid? The usual causes are a mistyped character (0 and O, or 1 and I), a missing or extra space, or a postcode that has been retired. Royal Mail retires and replaces postcodes when streets are redeveloped. Type the postcode into the search box: the tool tells you if it is current, retired (and in which year), or does not exist. My home is a new build. Why does it have no postcode? New streets are named and numbered by the local council first, and Royal Mail then allocates a postcode. Until that happens, the property will not appear in address lookups. Ask the developer or the council's street naming and numbering team for the official address and the date it was registered with Royal Mail. Does this work outside the UK? Yes. In the United States, use our What's My ZIP Code tool, which adds your county and districts. Elsewhere outside Great Britain and Northern Ireland the postcode comes from OpenStreetMap, which records postcodes for most of Europe, such as 10117 in central Berlin or 75007 around the Eiffel Tower. Coverage is good in cities and patchier in the countryside. Ireland's Eircodes are not in open data, so the tool links to the official Eircode finder there. ## Sources - UK postcode locations and administrative areas: [ONS Postcode Directory](https://www.ons.gov.uk/methodology/geography/geographicalproducts/postcodeproducts), Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence), served by [postcodes.io](https://postcodes.io). - Addresses and postcodes outside the UK: [OpenStreetMap contributors](https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright), via the Nominatim geocoder. - Postcode counts and addresses per postcode: Royal Mail Postcode Address File figures. ## Related tools [ ### My Location Your coordinates and address ](https://getmylocations.com/my-location)[ ### Address Finder Address ↔ coordinates ](https://getmylocations.com/address-finder)[ ### Satellite View See the address from above ](https://getmylocations.com/satellite)[ ### What's My ZIP Code For the United States ](https://getmylocations.com/whats-my-zip-code) AA Written by ### Ahmed Anwar Senior software engineer in Karachi. Builds the geolocation tools, mapping pages, and coordinate utilities on GetMyLocations. Writes about GPS, browser geolocation, and IP geolocation from the perspective of someone who ships the code, not the marketing. This article was researched and drafted with AI assistance, then edited and fact-checked by Ahmed before publication. [More about the author](https://getmylocations.com/about).