About GetZips
A postal code reference that shows its working.
GetZips publishes a profile for every one of the 41,488 US postal codes. Each page pulls together federal data that is public but scattered: the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, the Gazetteer's land measurements, GeoNames' postal geography, and live weather from NOAA.
What makes this different
We show margins of error. ACS figures are survey estimates, not counts. A population of 29,079 with a margin of ±1,790 is a different claim from a population of 29,079 stated flatly. Most ZIP code sites hide this. We print it next to the number.
We admit when there is no data. Roughly 7,848 US ZIP codes have no residential population at all — PO Box clusters, and codes assigned to a single high-volume recipient like a government mailroom. These have no Census ZIP Code Tabulation Area, so no demographics exist. Sites that print "Population: 0" for these are wrong. We explain what the ZIP actually is.
ZIP codes are not polygons. A USPS ZIP code is a collection of mail delivery routes — essentially lines along streets. The Census Bureau's ZCTA is a polygon approximating it, built from residential census blocks. There are about 41,700 ZIPs and only about 33,600 ZCTAs. Where we report demographics, we are reporting the ZCTA, and we say so.
Vintage
Demographic figures come from the 2019–2023 ACS 5-Year Estimates, the most recent release covering every ZCTA. Land areas come from the 2023 Gazetteer. Weather is fetched live from the National Weather Service each time you load a page.
Full detail on every dataset is on the sources page.