Does the geocoding API return a postal code?

Yes. /geocode returns the postal code alongside coordinates when it is available for the resolved address. /reverse-geocode returns the postal code of the nearest address. Postal coverage is best in cities where Statistics Canada publishes it; where no nearby postal is known, the field is returned as null rather than guessed.

Do I need to normalize the address first?

No. Pass the address as you have it. The API normalizes street types, unit prefixes, embedded city, province and postal tokens, and French street prefixes before matching, so lightly-cleaned source addresses resolve without pre-processing.

What area does it cover?

Over 10 million Canadian street addresses across every province, sourced from the Statistics Canada Open Database of Addresses, with municipal geocoding tuned for dozens of the largest cities.

API

Canadian Geocoding
& Postal Code API

Turn any Canadian street address into coordinates and a postal code, or turn a lat/lng into the nearest real address. Built on 10 million+ Statistics Canada open addresses across every province, through one REST API.

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10M+Canadian addresses

All 10provinces covered

/geocodeaddress to lat/lng + postal

/reverse-geocodelat/lng to nearest address

How it works

Forward geocoding resolves a street address to coordinates and, where known, a postal code. It runs a chain of matchers: municipality-tuned address normalization for dozens of the largest cities, a province-wide match across the full 10M-address index, and a live fallback for the long tail, each labelled with a match type and confidence. Reverse geocoding finds the nearest real address to a coordinate using a spatial (PostGIS KNN) index and returns its distance in metres and postal code.

/geocode response

lat, lng

WGS84 coordinates for the resolved address

postal_code

Postal code where known for the address, else null (never guessed from far away)

province

Two-letter province code, where determined

normalized_address

The cleaned street address the match was made on

match_type

How it resolved: oda, cache, street, exact, or nominatim

confidence

Match confidence from 0 to 1

/reverse-geocode response

address

Nearest real street address to the coordinate

city, province

City and two-letter province of the nearest address

postal_code

Postal code of the nearest address, where known

distance_m

Distance in metres from the query point to the returned address

Who uses geocoding data

Address enrichment

Attach coordinates and a postal code to any address in a CRM, listing, or portfolio. Pass the address as you have it: normalization is built in.

Map & radius search

Geocode addresses to plot them, cluster them, or filter by distance. Reverse-geocode a pin back to the nearest civic address.

Data joins

Resolve addresses to a common coordinate so permits, assessments, zoning, and licences line up on the same parcel across sources.

Deduplication & cleanup

Collapse messy address variants to one canonical point and postal code to dedupe records and validate entries at capture time.

API example

GET /geocode?address=100 Queen St W&municipality=toronto

# Address to coordinates + postal code
# Returns: lat, lng, postal_code, province, normalized_address, match_type, confidence

GET /reverse-geocode?lat=43.6426&lng=-79.3871

# Coordinate to nearest civic address
# Returns: address, city, province, postal_code, distance_m

Part of the same API as building permits, zoning, property assessments, and business licences. One API key. Source attribution is on our terms page.

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Part of the BuildData Canadian construction and property data platform. Join geocoded addresses to permits, zoning, assessments, and licences with the property data API.

Canadian Geocoding& Postal Code API