Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Geocode Earth VS ZIP Code API

Compare Geocode Earth VS ZIP Code API and see what are their differences

Geocode Earth logo Geocode Earth

Build smarter location experiences with our fast, accurate & affordable geocoding solutions.

ZIP Code API logo ZIP Code API

REST API for US ZIP, ZIP+4, and Canadian postal codes. Single unified endpoint covers address validation and standardization, radius search (centroid haversine and true spatial polygon intersection), point-to-point distance, autocomplete/typeah
  • Geocode Earth Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-06-24

Geocode Earth provide quality Address Autocomplete, Reverse Geocoding & Place Geocoding solutions to small-to-medium sized businesses.

The company is run by the team behind the popular open-source geocoding engine Pelias, they are committed to preserving User Privacy and have been publishing Open Source GIS software since 2014.

Discounts are available for non-profit, academic & open-source projects

  • ZIP Code API Landing page
    Landing page //
    2026-05-21

API for US ZIP, ZIP+4, and Canadian postal code data. One unified endpoint set covers North America โ€” no separate APIs by country or data type.

What it does

  • Address validation and standardization โ€” production-grade parser with ZIP+4 append, refreshed monthly
  • Radius search โ€” centroid haversine and true spatial polygon intersection. Returns ZIPs/FSAs within range, with per-result pct_inside overlap percentage for spatial queries
  • Unified lookup endpoint โ€” accepts US ZIP, ZIP+4, Canadian FSA, full Canadian postal codes, or latitude/longitude inputs
  • Autocomplete/typeahead โ€” cities, counties, metros, states, FSAs, ZIPs
  • Point-to-point distance โ€” between any two postal points
  • Census ACS demographics โ€” 2011โ€“2024, 542 fields per ZIP across income, education, housing, social, and economic profiles
  • Boundary lookups โ€” Census tracts, congressional districts, state legislative areas, school districts โ€” with computed intersection percentages per ZIP

What makes it different

  • Licensed commercial data โ€” not commodity or scraped sources
  • Canadian postal coverage โ€” most peers in this space are US-only
  • True spatial radius โ€” not just centroid haversine
  • 14 years of historical ACS depth via API โ€” unusual outside of raw Census downloads
  • One endpoint for all of North America โ€” no country-detection or input-routing logic to maintain on the client side

Pricing

  • Free โ€” 2,500 lookups/day, no credit card required, no expiry
  • Developer โ€” $49/mo, 100K credits, 300/min
  • Professional โ€” $149/mo, 350K credits, 300/min
  • Business โ€” $499/mo, 1.5M credits, 600/min
  • Credit packs โ€” one-time, from 25K ($19) up to 2M ($799)

Resources

Geocode Earth

$ Details
paid Free Trial $100.0 / Monthly
Platforms
REST API Browser JavaScript Node JS
Release Date
2018 January

ZIP Code API

Pricing URL
-
$ Details
-
Platforms
-
Release Date
2026 April
Startup details
Country
United States
State
NY

Geocode Earth features and specs

  • Address Autocomplete
  • Places Autocomplete
  • Reverse Geocoding
  • Structured Geocoding
  • Batch Geocoding
  • Geocoding API
  • Address Interpolation
  • Street Intersections
  • ZIP Code Geocoding
  • OpenStreetMap Data
  • Geonames Data
  • US Census Data

ZIP Code API features and specs

  • Comprehensive ZIP Code Data
    The ZIP Code API from zip-codes.com provides extensive data including ZIP code details, city information, state data, and geographic coordinates, making it a thorough resource for location-based lookups.
  • Multiple Lookup Options
    The API supports various types of lookups including ZIP code to city/state, city/state to ZIP code, distance calculations between ZIP codes, and radius searches, offering flexible querying capabilities.
  • Easy Integration
    The API uses standard REST-based HTTP requests and returns data in commonly used formats like JSON and XML, making it straightforward to integrate into most applications and programming languages.
  • Distance and Radius Calculations
    The API includes built-in functionality for calculating distances between ZIP codes and finding ZIP codes within a specified radius, which is valuable for store locators, shipping estimates, and proximity-based features.
  • Well-Documented Endpoints
    The API provides clear documentation for its various endpoints and parameters, helping developers understand available features and implement them correctly without extensive trial and error.

Analysis of ZIP Code API

Overall verdict

  • ZIP Code API from zip-codes.com is a solid, reliable choice for developers and businesses needing accurate US and Canadian postal code data, offering a straightforward RESTful interface with regularly updated databases.

Why this product is good

  • Provides accurate and frequently updated ZIP code, city, state, and geographic data
  • Offers a simple RESTful API that is easy to integrate into web and mobile applications
  • Supports features like ZIP code lookup, radius search, and distance calculations
  • Includes both US ZIP codes and Canadian postal codes for broader coverage
  • Backed by an established data provider with a long track record in postal data

Recommended for

  • Developers building address validation or autofill features
  • E-commerce platforms needing shipping and location-based calculations
  • Businesses performing geographic or radius-based store locators
  • Applications requiring reliable US and Canadian postal data
  • Marketing and logistics teams that need regional or demographic targeting

Geocode Earth videos

Address Autocomplete

ZIP Code API videos

No ZIP Code API videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

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Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Geocode Earth and ZIP Code API)
Maps
100 100%
0% 0
Zip Lookup
0 0%
100% 100
Geolocation API
100 100%
0% 0
APIs
0 0%
100% 100

Questions & Answers

As answered by people managing Geocode Earth and ZIP Code API.

What's the story behind your product?

Geocode Earth's answer

Geocode Earth was founded after the core geocoding team left Mapzen after its shutdown in 2017. After years of building open-source geocoding software, we knew we had the expertice and connections to build better geocoding for everyone.

What makes your product unique?

Geocode Earth's answer

We are a founder-owned small business with an experienced team. We design our tools to have a privacy focus (we don't sell, or even keep, any data that could be considered sensitive, PII, etc). When you reach out to us, you'll get a real human support response, not AI.

Finally we have a commitment to open source: we contribute heavily back to both the open data projects that power our service, and to software like Pelias (which we created).

Why should a person choose your product over its competitors?

Geocode Earth's answer

Our commitment to privacy (we do not sell or even store any significant information about your use of our service), our fast, knowledgeable, human support team, and our fast and accurate services.

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Geocode Earth and ZIP Code API

Geocode Earth Reviews

18 Top Google Places API Alternatives for Points of Interest Data in 2022
Geocode Earth offers location data, geocoding and content localisation features. You can use these to Add geographic search features to your website or app. Since its service uses open data, you can store search results within your own database.
Source: traveltime.com

ZIP Code API Reviews

We have no reviews of ZIP Code API yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Geocode Earth seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 6 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Geocode Earth mentions (6)

  • Geocoding APIs compared: Pricing, free tiers and terms of use
    Geocoding is a really fun (and sometimes frustrating) problem I've been lucky enough to have been working to solve for over 10 years now. I joined Mapzen in 2015 which ostensibly was part of a Samsung startup accelerator, but looking back, it's more descriptive to say it was an open-source mapping software R&D lab. We built what is now foundational open-source geospatial tools like the Pelias geocoder (my team)... - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • Serverless maps at 1/700 the cost of Google Maps API
    As the developer of this system, I concur with this; Protomaps is focused on map tiles, and can be used with other solutions such as http://geocode.earth for search. A small detail: I don't believe this is the absolute cheapest way to deliver map tiles. Renting an unmetered bandwidth server is always going to be the cheapest way to host content, but unmanaged servers don't give you SSL termination, infinite... - Source: Hacker News / over 3 years ago
  • Is there a free version / alternative of google places api?
    The honest truth is that google places is simply the best in the world, and the 2nd place is far behind. that's probably foursquare. After that, mapbox, then mapquest, then https://geocode.earth/. All of those are paid. Source: about 4 years ago
  • Mantle โ€“ Serverless Maps Using Lambda or Cloudflare Workers
    The stack I describe in the post is only for map tiles - Map tiles are a good fit for CDNs because the input space is small (just Z/X/Y coordinates on a square grid) and thus very cacheable. Geocoding is a very different problem because the input space - human language - is much, much larger, and answering queries quickly to support features like autocomplete really requires a server with hot data in memory. One... - Source: Hacker News / over 4 years ago
  • Positionstack (by APILayer) Geocoding-API down for over 14 days, with no ETA
    If anyone comes across this looking for an alternative, we can help at Geocode Earth (https://geocode.earth). We're a small independent company that has been working on geocoding since 2013, first as part of Mapzen(https://mapzen.com), and then with our own self-funded business after Mapzen shut down at the start of 2018. Our core software, the Pelias Geocoder (https://pelias.io) is open source, and ironically we... - Source: Hacker News / over 4 years ago
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ZIP Code API mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of ZIP Code API yet. Tracking of ZIP Code API recommendations started around May 2026.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Geocode Earth and ZIP Code API, you can also consider the following products

Algolia Places - Intelligent address autocomplete for any <input>

Smarty - Smarty provides address validation, autocomplete, geocoding and reverse geocoding services covering addresses in over 240+ countries.

OpenCage Geocoder - Easy, Open, Worldwide, Affordable Geocoding.

Zipcodestack - Free Zip Code API - Free Postal Code Validation | Zipcodestack

Mapbox - An open source mapping platform for custom designed maps. Our APIs and SDKs are the building blocks to integrate location into any mobile or web app.

PostalDataPI - The most affordable postal code API. 240+ countries, sub-5 ms responses. Simple, elegant, transparent.