UK Address Look-ups by Postcode

Anyone use any services?

[jweighell]

I'm looking for some sort of postcode lookup service that I can tie-in with my website for taking UK customer address details. Preferably cheap or even better free! :p

[aspdaddy]

No, its quite an expensive feature to add.

[inbound]

You can find details of legitimate services by visiting the Royal Mail website. The term used for their postcode data is PAF (Postcode Address File), they have several resellers that do many things from simply re-packaging the data right through to services like the one you describe.

Royal Mail Reseller Search Page [royalmail.com]

[mack]

I don't some work on this a little while back and I ran into problems when I tried to achieve this on the cheap. :)

I think the best data you can use for this will be the Royal Mail PAF file. It contains all the information related postcodes, areas, counties towns etc. The problem is it's not cheap and it's an annual licence.

Mack.

[inbound]

Mack's right about trying to do it on the cheap being a pain, but I'd say that unless you are needing the PAF data for some other reason you would be better using a service like you described.

If you purchase the data (and annual license with quarterly updates) you will spend around £1200 on that alone. Then you'll need to get it working, and then you'll have to have a way to manage the updates...

It's easier to subscribe to a service.