Canadian postal code lookup
Free postal code lookup for Canada: type an address or use your location to find its postal code, then see the area it serves and which carriers deliver there.
An address you type, or your location if you share it, goes to Google Maps to find the postal code. We don't keep either. A postal code you type is checked here, with no lookup.
Type an address to find its postal code.
You’ll see the area it serves and which carriers deliver there.
How to find a postal code
Short answer. Type the street address, with the house number and the city, into the lookup above and pick it from the list, or press Use my location. You get the six-character postal code, like M5V 2T6, the area it serves, and which carriers deliver there.
What is my postal code?
Press Use my location above and let your browser share it once: the lookup finds the address where you are and its postal code. Your location goes to Google Maps for that one lookup, and we don't keep it.
How Canadian postal codes work
A postal code has six characters in two halves, like M5V 2T6. The first half, the forward sortation area, names a region: a part of a city, a town, or a rural area. The second half narrows it to a street, a block face, a building or a group of rural addresses.
Carriers read the first half to work out how far a parcel travels, which sets its price and delivery time. That’s why our delivery time calculator only needs the first three characters.
What the postal code changes for a parcel
- Rural codes (a 0 in second place) can narrow the carriers that deliver, and some services take longer there.
- Northern codes (starting with X or Y) are served by fewer services, and those take longer.
- PO boxes have their own postal codes, and only Canada Post delivers to them.
- A wrong postal code can send a parcel to the wrong depot. Carriers may correct the address and charge for it.
Questions about postal codes
How do I find the postal code for an address?
Type the street address, with the house number and the city, and pick it from the list. The finder shows the postal code and what it means for shipping. A PO box has its own postal code, separate from the street's: the box holder knows it, and Canada Post's Find a postal code tool lists it.
What do the first three characters of a postal code mean?
They are the forward sortation area, the region a code belongs to. The first letter stands for a province, a territory or part of one: M is Toronto, V is British Columbia and X is the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. Carriers use these three characters to work out distance and delivery time.
What does a 0 as the second character mean?
A zero in second place marks a rural area, such as K0A around Ottawa. Some carriers and services don't reach rural addresses, and a rural route address needs extra details.
Can one street have more than one postal code?
Yes. In a city, a postal code often covers one side of a block or one large building, so a long street can have dozens. Search with the house number to get the right one.
Can I find an address from a postal code?
Only the area. A postal code covers a block face, a building or a group of rural addresses, so it doesn't lead back to one street address. Type a postal code here and you get the area it serves, its province, whether it's urban, rural or northern, and which carriers deliver there.
Which carriers deliver to PO boxes?
Only Canada Post. Purolator, UPS, FedEx and UniUni deliver to street addresses.
Is a postal code the same as a zip code?
They do the same job. A Canadian postal code has six characters, letters and digits in the pattern A1A 1A1, written with one space in the middle. A US ZIP code has five digits, or nine with a hyphen.
Where the data comes from
Addresses and postal codes come from Google Maps, looked up when you search; we don’t keep them. The area names come from Wikipedia’s list of postal codes of Canada, under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. Which carriers deliver comes from our carrier pages, checked against each carrier’s own. Read more in our privacy policy.
Compare four carriers in one quote
UniUni, Purolator, UPS and FedEx in one account, paid per label.