ZIP code to latitude and longitude

Worked example: 90210 and a pasted list

The tool opens on 90210, Beverly Hills. Its ZCTA internal point is at latitude 34.1005 and longitude -118.4146, inside Los Angeles County, California, and the ZCTA covers 10.75 square miles of land. Those coordinates are what most ZIP code databases call the ZIP centroid.

In Many ZIP codes mode the sample list mixes formats on purpose. "2134" is read as 02134 in Boston, because spreadsheets drop the leading zero from New England and New Jersey codes. "60614-1234" is a ZIP+4 code and is read as 60614 in Chicago. 96910 is Hagatna, Guam, which has a ZCTA but no county in the county file, so the state column shows the territory. 99999 is not an assigned code and is reported as no ZCTA.

How to use it

1. Leave One ZIP code selected and type a code in ZIP code. A ZIP+4 code such as 90210-1234 works too.
2. The readout shows the latitude and longitude of the ZCTA internal point, its land area, and the county and state that contain the point. The map zooms to the point and outlines the county.
3. Press Copy coordinates to copy the pair as "lat, lon". The code is kept in the page address for sharing.
4. For a list, switch to Many ZIP codes and paste codes into the box, separated by commas, spaces, tabs, or new lines. The table shows each input, the 5 digit code it was read as, its coordinates, and its county and state, or "no ZCTA".
5. Press Download CSV to save every row with zip, lat, lon, a found column, land area, county, and state.

Which point the coordinates describe

A ZIP code is a set of delivery routes, so it has no single official coordinate. The Census Bureau publishes one for each ZIP Code Tabulation Area: the internal point in the 2024 Gazetteer. It is placed inside the ZCTA, usually near its middle, and for odd shapes it is moved so it never falls outside. It is not the post office and not the population center.

For a small urban ZCTA the point is within a few blocks of everything in it. For a large rural ZCTA it can be many miles from the town the ZIP code is named after. If you are geocoding customer records, a street address gives a far better point than the ZIP code does.

How pasted codes are read

Bulk mode splits your text on anything that is not a digit or a hyphen, so commas, spaces, tabs, semicolons, and line breaks all work, and you can paste a whole spreadsheet column. Each piece is then read as a 5 digit code:

• Five digits are used as they are.
• Nine digits, with or without a hyphen, are a ZIP+4 code and keep their first five digits.
• Three or four digits get leading zeros back, so 2134 becomes 02134 and 501 becomes 00501. Spreadsheets often strip these zeros from codes in the Northeast and Puerto Rico.
• Anything else is marked as not a ZIP code.

Each code is listed once, in the order it first appears. The CSV keeps your original input next to the code it was read as, so you can match rows back to your source file.

Codes without a ZCTA

About 41,000 ZIP codes are in use, but only 33,791 have a ZCTA. The rest are PO Box codes, codes for a single company or agency, and military codes, which cover no land of their own. Those rows come back with found set to no. If you need a point for one of them, the ZIP code of the surrounding street addresses is usually the right stand-in.

The county and state come from testing the internal point against the 2024 Census county outlines. Puerto Rico and the island territories have no rows in that file, so their state column names the territory and the county column is empty.