USPS Web Tools Replacement for Address & ZIP

USPS Web Tools retired January 25, 2026. secure.shippingapis.com is gone, and every Verify / ZipCodeLookup / CityStateLookup integration that didn’t migrate is broken. Zip-Codes.com is a JSON, single-API-key replacement for the address-and-ZIP operations — with 2,500 free credits per day, no expiration.

Get an API key Open the playground

2,500 credits/day · No credit card · No expiration

Jan 25, 2026 Web Tools retired

XML→JSON format migration

USERID becomes single API key

2,500 free credits / day

USPS Web Tools ran for roughly 22 years as the de facto free address-and-shipping API for US developers. It covered three families: address operations (Verify, ZipCodeLookup, CityStateLookup), rate calculation (RateV4, IntlRateV2), and tracking / labels (TrackV2, eVS, Service Standards). When USPS retired the whole platform on January 25, 2026, integrations across WooCommerce, Magento, Drupal Commerce, nopCommerce, osCommerce, custom ERPs, and one-off scripts went dark. This page is about replacing the address-and-ZIP family. For tracking and shipping, you’ll need a separate path.

Operation Mapping

USPS Web Tools operation	Zip-Codes.com equivalent	Notes
Address Family — What We Replace
`Verify` (address standardization)	`GET /v2/address`	Returns standardized address, ZIP+4, parsed components, confidence, USPS metadata
`ZipCodeLookup` (address → ZIP)	`GET /v2/address`	ZIP+4 is part of the standardized output — same endpoint as Verify
`CityStateLookup` (ZIP → city/state)	`GET /v2/quick-zip`	Plus 50+ optional fields if you upgrade to `/v2/zip`

Rates / Tracking / Labels — Not Covered Here
`RateV4`, `IntlRateV2`	Not offered	Rate calculation — use a shipping-rate API (EasyPost, Shippo, etc.)
`TrackV2`	Not offered	Package tracking — use a tracking API (AfterShip, etc.)
`ExpressMailCommitment`, `StandardB`, `SDCGetLocations`	Not offered	Service standards — USPS direct or a shipping API
`eVS`, `eVSCancel`	Not offered	Label printing — use a label/shipping API

Beyond Web Tools — Capabilities USPS Didn’t Offer
(no equivalent)	`GET /v2/radius`	ZIPs within N miles of a point, centroid or spatial polygon mode
(no equivalent)	`GET /v2/suggest`	Typeahead across cities, counties, CBSAs, ZIPs, FSAs
(no equivalent)	`GET /v2/distance`	Point-to-point distance and bearing
(no equivalent)	`GET /v2/zip` with enrichments	Census ACS demographics, congressional / state / school districts, timezone
(no Canadian support)	Canadian FSA + postal coverage on every relevant endpoint	1,600+ FSAs and 876,000+ full postal codes, native

The Three Things That Change in Migration

Most teams report migrations measured in hours, not days. Here’s where the work concentrates.

XML POST → JSON GET

Web Tools accepted requests as application/x-www-form-urlencoded with an XML= parameter carrying the request body, then returned text/xml. That format was a pain in 2026 — SAX/DOM helpers and XSLT pipelines, manual XML-string construction, and HTTP-200-on-logical-error handling that hid real failures.

Our endpoints accept ordinary REST: GET with query parameters, application/json response, real HTTP status codes (200 success, 4xx for client errors, 5xx for ours), and a consistent response envelope. Every mainstream language has JSON parsing in its stdlib — the parser code you write is shorter and you can stop importing XML libraries for this one workflow.

USERID → single API key

Web Tools authentication was a plaintext USERID attribute on the outermost XML element — no secret, no rotation, tied to a registration at registration.shippingapis.com. It worked, but it wasn’t a credential you’d want in production secret management.

Our auth is a single API key. Pass it as an X-Api-Key header or a key= query parameter. No key-pair handshake (Smarty uses auth-id+auth-token). No OAuth dance. Keys are generated, rotated, scoped, and split into per-environment instances in your dashboard. Up to 25 keys on the Business tier — one for prod, one for staging, one for each application.

One ShippingAPI.dll endpoint → specialized endpoints

Web Tools routed every operation through one dispatcher (secure.shippingapis.com/ShippingAPI.dll) and you selected the operation via the API= query parameter. That conflated very different operations into one URL and made routing, retries, and circuit breakers awkward.

Each of our endpoints has its own URL: /v2/address, /v2/zip, /v2/quick-zip, /v2/radius, /v2/suggest, /v2/distance. Standard REST semantics. Routing and observability work the way the rest of your stack expects. And critically — ours share one credit pool, so even with the endpoint split, billing stays consolidated: one account, one balance, one bill.

Code: Web Tools ↔ Zip-Codes.com

The address-validation migration in two columns. Same address, same workflow.

USPS Web Tools (retired Jan 25, 2026)

POST https://secure.shippingapis.com/ShippingAPI.dll
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded

API=Verify&XML=
<AddressValidateRequest USERID="YOUR_USERID">
  <Revision>1</Revision>
  <Address ID="0">
    <Address1></Address1>
    <Address2>1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW</Address2>
    <City>Washington</City>
    <State>DC</State>
    <Zip5></Zip5>
    <Zip4></Zip4>
  </Address>
</AddressValidateRequest>

# Response: text/xml
<AddressValidateResponse>
  <Address ID="0">
    <Address2>1600 PENNSYLVANIA AVE NW</Address2>
    <City>WASHINGTON</City>
    <State>DC</State>
    <Zip5>20500</Zip5>
    <Zip4>0003</Zip4>
  </Address>
</AddressValidateResponse>

Zip-Codes.com (replacement)

GET https://api.zip-codes.com/v2/address
    ?address=1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington DC
    &key=YOUR_API_KEY

# Response: application/json
{
  "success": true,
  "results": [{
    "success": true,
    "matches": [{
      "formatted_address": "1600 PENNSYLVANIA AVE NW, WASHINGTON, DC 20500-0003",
      "address_line1": "1600 PENNSYLVANIA AVE NW",
      "address_line2": "WASHINGTON, DC 20500-0003",
      "address_components": {
        "number": "1600", "street": "PENNSYLVANIA", "suffix": "AVE",
        "post_directional": "NW", "city": "WASHINGTON", "state": "DC",
        "zip": "20500", "plus4": "0003", "country": "US"
      },
      "match_info": { "confidence": "high" },
      "details": {
        "record_type": "H", "record_type_description": "Highrise",
        "carrier_route": "C049", "county_fips": "11001",
        "congressional_district": "98", "building_name": "WHITE HOUSE"
      }
    }]
  }],
  "meta": { "credits": { "used": 1, "remaining": 2499 } }
}

Notice the response carries more structured data than Web Tools’ address envelope — parsed components broken out, confidence flag, carrier route, county FIPS, congressional district, building name, record type. All from the same 1-credit call.

Try a real address in the playground

Pricing

Web Tools was free with unspecified rate limits and ToS restrictions on list/batch use. Most production Web Tools workloads fit on our free or Developer tiers.

Monthly volume	USPS Web Tools (former)	Zip-Codes.com
Up to ~75,000 calls	Free (with ToS restrictions)	Free tier — 2,500/day, no card
100,000 calls	Free	$49 Developer plan
1,000,000 calls	Free (gray-area at this scale on Web Tools ToS)	$499 Business plan

For most Web Tools migrations: the free tier covers evaluation and small production workloads at no cost. Paid tiers buy higher per-minute rates, batch endpoints, and full enrichment depth on /v2/zip.

What this page doesn’t replace from Web Tools

Web Tools covered more than addresses. If your integration depended on these, you need another path:

RateV4 / IntlRateV2 — postage rate calculation.
TrackV2 — package tracking.
ExpressMailCommitment, StandardB, SDCGetLocations — service standards and delivery commitments.
eVS, eVSCancel — label printing and eVS workflows.
CASS-certified validation — Web Tools’ Verify was DPV-certified output. We standardize against authoritative ZIP+4 ranges but don’t hold CASS or DPV certification. For workflows requiring certified mailing-deliverable output, evaluate Smarty or another CASS-licensed vendor.

For shipping/tracking/labels, EasyPost, Shippo, and AfterShip are common 2026 paths.

Need migration help?

Sign up, get an API key in under 60 seconds, and try /v2/address in the playground before you touch your code path. If you’re migrating a WooCommerce / Magento / Drupal Commerce / nopCommerce store and want a hand mapping the integration, email support@zip-codes.com with your platform.

Get an API key Try the playground

2,500 credits/day · No credit card · Documentation

Frequently Asked Questions

USPS Web Tools was retired on January 25, 2026. USPS announced the sunset in a February 6, 2025 Industry Alert, giving roughly 11 months of notice. As of the shutdown date, secure.shippingapis.com no longer responds to requests, breaking every integration that hadn’t migrated.

For the standardization-and-ZIP+4-append use case, yes. Pass a free-form address, get back the standardized address, ZIP+4, parsed components (number, street, suffix, secondary type, city, state, ZIP), confidence flags, and USPS-style delivery metadata (carrier route, county FIPS, congressional district, building name, record type). What /v2/address does NOT include: DPV certification (we standardize against authoritative ZIP+4 ranges; we don’t hold USPS CASS or DPV certification). For workflows that strictly require certified delivery-point validation, a CASS-licensed vendor like Smarty is the right fit.

No. We replace the address-and-ZIP family of Web Tools operations (Verify, ZipCodeLookup, CityStateLookup). Web Tools also offered RateV4 / IntlRateV2 (rate calculation), TrackV2 (tracking), ExpressMailCommitment (delivery commitments), eVS (label printing), and Service Delivery Calculator operations — we don’t replace those. If your integration depended on shipping/tracking/labeling workflows, you’ll need a separate vendor for that path.

The address-validation step is straightforward — replace the XML POST to secure.shippingapis.com with a JSON GET to api.zip-codes.com/v2/address, swap your USERID for an API key, and update your parser from XML to JSON. Plugin updates from those platforms’ communities are landing as of early 2026; you may want to wait for an official update or fork the legacy module. For shipping-rate and tracking integrations, you’ll need a separate shipping API. Email support@zip-codes.com with your platform if you want help mapping the address path.

Free tier: 60 requests per minute. Paid tiers: 300 req/min on Developer ($49/mo) and Professional ($149/mo); 600 req/min on Business ($499/mo). Daily credit ceilings: 2,500 credits/day free tier, 100K/350K/1.5M monthly on paid tiers. One credit per /v2/address call regardless of match outcome.

Single API key, passed either as an X-Api-Key header or a key= query parameter. No USERID. No password. No OAuth handshake or token refresh. The key is generated in your dashboard at zip-codes.com/api and can be rotated, scoped to specific IPs or domains, or split into multiple keys (up to 25 on the Business tier) for separate environments.

Web Tools was US-only. We cover Canadian addresses too — full 1,600+ FSAs and 876,000+ 6-character postal codes, native on every relevant endpoint, no separate subscription. /v2/quick-zip and /v2/zip accept Canadian FSA / postal codes directly; /v2/distance handles cross-border pairs in one call.

For most teams: minutes to days, not weeks. The integration shape is the same — outbound HTTP, address in, structured response out. Concrete steps: (1) sign up, get an API key, try /v2/address against a known address in the playground; (2) swap the URL and auth in your existing code path; (3) update the XML parser to a JSON parser (most languages have native JSON in stdlib); (4) update field-name mappings since JSON field names differ from XML element names. The bulk of effort is the XML→JSON parsing change.