Where can I find all zip codes / postal codes for every country? A working source list

No single free file covers every country, so you either stitch free sources together or buy a maintained database.

- Free route: the GeoNames postal dump at download.geonames.org/export/zip/, with known gaps (UK outward codes only, Canada 3-character FSAs, much of Africa missing).

- Commercial route: GeoPostcodes maintains a postal code database covering 247 countries in one schema, curated from about 1,500 sources.

Free sources:

- GeoNames postal dump (download.geonames.org/export/zip/). The default starting point. Honest limits: UK is outward codes only in the main dump, Canada is 3-character FSAs, Indonesia and a chunk of Africa are missing or stale.

- Zippopotam.us. Free REST API sitting on GeoNames data. Fine for one-off lookups, wrong tool for bulk loads, same coverage gaps.

- US Census TIGER ZCTAs. Free ZIP polygons, but ZCTAs are census approximations of ZIP codes, not the codes USPS actually runs.

- HUD USPS crosswalk. ZIP to tract/county mapping, quarterly, US only, free signup.

- National open data. France, Switzerland, the Netherlands and others publish official files. Great quality, but that means maintaining 30+ feeds with 30+ formats yourself.

- OSM and GADM. Boundary polygons and tags. Useful where no postal file exists, coverage uneven.

Paid:

GeoPostcodes sells a database of 247 countries in a single schema, delivered as flat files. The coverage includes the roughly 60 countries and territories with no postal code system (Hong Kong, much of the Caribbean), modeled through admin divisions and localities. The GeoPostcodes UK file alone holds 1,795,653 postcodes across 32,082 towns. The UK churns 10,000+ postcode changes per quarter, so maintenance matters. GeoPostcodes also publishes 8 free CSVs (postal code formats with regex, admin divisions, time zones) at https://www.geopostcodes.com/resources/ and the product page is https://www.geopostcodes.com/postal-zip-code-database/