Find Every Canadian Postal Code Within a Radius
Enter a Canadian postal code, use your current location, or click a point on the map, set a radius in kilometres, and get every postal code inside it - list, map, and CSV export. At smaller radii, expect most results to span the search boundary rather than sit cleanly inside it: a Canadian postal code's own address area is often bigger than the radius you're searching, especially outside dense city cores. That's the normal shape of a Canadian radius search, not a fault in this tool, and every affected result is marked rather than shown with false confidence. Rural codes carry their own marker too.
See exactly how accurate a postal code centroid really is before you search.
Need the complete list of Canadian postal codes within a set distance of a location, not just the closest handful? This tool returns every postal code inside the circle you set - useful for delivery zones, sales territories, direct mail campaigns, and service area coverage where you need to know exactly which postal codes are in play.
The data behind it is Statistics Canada's National Address Register: each postal code's centroid is the mean position of its own served addresses, with PO box, postal station, and general delivery records already excluded before that mean was taken. That's a more honest centroid than one built from raw geocoded points, but it's still a mean position across a district, not a single address - see the accuracy figures below for exactly how far off that can be.
Before you search: what a postal code radius can and can't tell you
A Canadian postal code's centroid is not delivery-grade precision. Measured directly:
- Only 42.8% of Canadian postal codes have every address inside them within 50 metres of the code's centre point. 69.2% are within 100 metres, 89.0% within 200 metres.
- Rural postal codes (second character zero) are 0.54% of all codes but hold 13.6% of addresses, with a median worst case of 9,388 metres from the code's centre to an address inside it.
- A code whose centroid falls just inside your search circle can have most of its addresses outside it, and a code whose centroid falls just outside can still have addresses inside. This tool marks those results "Spans boundary" rather than giving a confident-looking yes or no it can't actually back up. At small radii this is normal, not exceptional: a postal code's own address area is often bigger than the radius you're searching, so expect most results at 10 or 20km to carry this mark. That is Canadian postal codes being coarse, not this tool being broken.
- 101 of the 852,474 postal codes in this tool (0.01%) have address records too scattered to safely place with a single centroid - genuinely ambiguous between a real second settlement sharing one rural code and an uncorrected error in the source data. Rather than guess, or hide the problem, this tool marks them "Scattered" wherever they appear and gives a caveat instead of a spread figure - see below.
Rural coverage is also thinner than a national figure suggests. Filtering removed PO box, postal station, and general delivery records, about 2% of records nationally - but in some rural FSAs it's far more: J0N (Quebec) lost 84.7% of its source records, S0G (Saskatchewan) 56.4%, S0E 55.3%. Those exclusions are correct - a PO box is not a place - but it means a rural search here may turn up less than an urban one, worth knowing up front rather than discovering as a gap.
The centroid build behind this tool is complete and national - all 1,672 FSAs, 852,474 postal codes - derived from the same correctly filtered address data as the rest of this site's Canadian tools. An earlier pass found 351 postal codes with an implausible address spread, traced to a small number of mis-geocoded source records dragging the centroid and spread off; a robust, median-based method excludes those specific stray records rather than the genuine large spreads rural Canadian postal codes really do have, resolving 250 of the 351. The remaining 101 are genuinely ambiguous - this method can't tell a data error apart from a real second settlement sharing one rural code, and guessing wrongly would erase a real place. Rather than block this tool on a manual review of 101 codes, or quietly ship them wrong, they're marked "Scattered" everywhere they appear, with a caveat in place of a spread figure. See the count above.
How It Works
- Enter a postal code - or tap "Use My Location" / "Click on Map"
- Set your radius - drag the slider, in kilometres or miles
- Click Search - see every postal code inside that radius, with distance
- Check the flags - rural results and ones that span the search boundary are marked, not hidden
Who Uses This Tool?
Get the list of postal codes that make up a delivery or service area.
Define territory boundaries by postal code radius for planning or CRM import.
Build a targeted mailing list of every postal code around a store or event location.
Confirm which postal codes fall inside your stated coverage radius - and which are borderline.
Frequently Asked Questions
How accurate is a Canadian postal code centroid?
Less accurate than most people assume. Measured directly against the underlying address data: only 42.8% of Canadian postal codes have every address inside them within 50 metres of the code's centre point, 69.2% within 100 metres, and 89.0% within 200 metres. A postal code is a district, not a delivery point, so a centroid-based radius search is inherently approximate.
What does "Spans boundary" mean, and why does it apply to so many results?
A postal code's centroid is a single point, but its real addresses are spread across an area - sometimes a city block, sometimes kilometres. When a code's own address area overlaps the search radius boundary, some of its addresses could genuinely be inside the circle while others are outside, or vice versa. This tool marks those results "Spans boundary" rather than presenting a false yes-or-no answer. At small radii this is the normal case, not the exception: a postal code's address area is often bigger than the radius being searched, so most results at 10 or 20km will carry this mark. That reflects the size of Canadian postal codes, not a problem with the search.
Why do rural postal codes get a marker?
Rural postal codes (second character zero) are 0.54% of all Canadian postal codes but hold 13.6% of addresses, with a median worst-case spread of 9,388 metres from the centroid. A rural result's distance to the origin is measured from a centroid that could be many kilometres from the address you actually care about, so it's marked rather than shown with the same confidence as a small urban code.
Why does it say my postal code is a PO box?
827 Canadian postal codes have no mappable address behind them because every address record under that code was a PO box, a postal station box, or general delivery - a delivery destination, not a physical place. Entering one of these as your origin reports specifically which category it is, not a generic "not found".
How is distance measured?
Distances are straight-line ("as the crow flies") measurements between postal code centroids, in kilometres by default with miles available as a display option. Actual driving distance will be longer due to road layouts.
Where does this data come from?
Statistics Canada's National Address Register (catalogue 46-26-0002), vintage June 2026, used under the Statistics Canada Open Licence. Each postal code's centroid is the mean position of its own served addresses, with PO box, postal station, and general delivery records already excluded before that mean was taken. Full attribution and licence details are on the credits page.
Can I export the results?
Yes. The export button gives you a CSV with each postal code, its distance from the origin, whether it's rural or near the search boundary, and the Statistics Canada attribution included in the file itself, not just on this page.
Related
- Nearest Postal Codes - the closest postal codes ranked by distance, not just everything within a radius
- Postal Code and Address Mapper - paste a list of postal codes or addresses and plot them all on a map
- Where Am I - don't know your postal code? Find your live location first, with an honest accuracy circle
- Credits and data sources for the full Statistics Canada attribution and licence text