GetMyPostalCode

Find Your Postal Code in Kenya

A Kenyan postal code identifies a post office rather than a street, because most post in Kenya is collected from a box rather than delivered to a door. Press the button to see the code for the office serving where you are standing.

Your location is only used to find your postal code.

Postal Code

00100

Kenya

Example

The Postal Code Format

Format

Five digits, written without a space (00100)

Example

00100

A Kenyan postal code is five digits with no space and no letters. Nairobi GPO is 00100.

The leading zeros are real and the capital carries two of them. Stored as a number anywhere along the way, 00100 becomes 100, which is not a Kenyan postal code. As everywhere, the answer is to keep postal codes as text.

The part that makes Kenya different is where the code sits in an address. It is written attached to the post office box, not to the street: P.O. Box 34567 - 00100, Nairobi. The code and the box number travel together, because together they say which box at which office.

What Each Part of a Postal Code Means

Read left to right, each part of a Kenya postal code narrows the destination down.

Breakdown of each part of a Kenya postal code
PartIdentifiesWhat it means
All five digitsA post officeThe code identifies the post office that serves the address, and in practice the office holding the box the mail is collected from.
Digits 1-2Broad areaPlace the office in a region. Nairobi and its immediate surroundings sit in the low ranges, which is why the capital carries leading zeros.
Digits 3-5The particular officeDistinguish one office from another within that area. Different Nairobi offices carry different codes rather than sharing a single city code.
Structure caveatNo published digit meaningClaims that the digits encode a county or a district appear on aggregator sites and are not supported by Posta Kenya, which publishes a directory of offices rather than a specification.

How postal codes work in Kenya

Kenyan addressing is built around post office boxes to a degree that has no equivalent in most of the countries covered on this site, and the postal code system reflects that directly rather than working around it.

In much of Kenya, mail is not delivered to a street address at all. Households and businesses rent a box at a post office and collect from it. The address that matters is therefore the box number and the office, and the postal code is the part that names the office. That is why a Kenyan address reads P.O. Box 34567 - 00100, Nairobi, with the code hyphenated onto the box rather than placed after the town as it would be almost anywhere else.

The consequence is that one city has many codes, one per office, rather than one code per district. Nairobi GPO, City Square and Eastleigh all serve Nairobi and all carry different codes. Someone whose box is at one office and whose house is nearer another has a postal code that reflects the office, not the house.

This also explains a thing that confuses visitors and international senders: the code 00100 is not "the Nairobi postal code". It is the code for one particular office. Addressing something to 00100 when the recipient collects from a different office sends it to the wrong building in the right city.

Street delivery does exist, particularly for businesses and in newer developments, and courier services work from physical addresses and phone numbers rather than from postal codes at all. But the postal code system itself remains anchored to offices, which is the thing to hold on to when any of it seems inconsistent.

What a location lookup can and cannot tell you here

This is the honest limit of this tool in Kenya, and it follows from the system rather than from any shortcoming of the lookup.

A reverse geocode answers the question "what postal code covers this point?". In a country where codes cover delivery areas, that maps neatly onto what you want. In Kenya the code names a post office, and which office serves you is a question about an arrangement — where your box is — as much as about where you are standing.

So what a lookup gives you is the code of the office serving that area, which is useful for filling in a form that demands something plausible and for getting your bearings. It is not necessarily your postal code, because your postal code is wherever your box is. If you rent a box across town, that office code is yours and no position will reveal it.

If you do not have a box at all, the office code for your area is the sensible value to use, and it is what most forms are really asking for.

Why 00100 is not simply "Nairobi"

It is extremely common to see 00100 given as the postal code for Nairobi, including on forms and in address templates. It is more precise than that and the imprecision causes real misdeliveries.

00100 belongs to the General Post Office. Other Nairobi offices have their own codes, and mail addressed to a box number at 00100 goes to the GPO whether or not the box is there. Because box numbers are not unique across offices, an item with the right box number and the wrong office code can end up at a real box belonging to somebody else.

The practical rule is that a box number and a postal code are a pair and must be copied together. Taking the box number from one source and the code from another — a letterhead and a web form, say — is where this goes wrong.

Where a lookup and Posta Kenya can disagree

Beyond the structural point above, the ordinary causes apply. A device fix is less reliable indoors, among tall buildings and when it is working from mobile signals rather than a clear satellite view, so near the edge of an area served by one office a lookup can return the neighbouring code.

Data coverage is the other factor. Postal codes appear less consistently in the open data behind reverse geocoding for Kenya than for countries with open government address files, so a lookup may return a town with no code, or nothing at all.

For a form field or a rough check, a lookup is quick and usually sensible. For anything that has to arrive — a document, a parcel, a bank communication — use the code that goes with the actual box, and confirm it against the Posta Kenya office directory rather than against a map.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I find a postal code from an address here?

No. This site works only from your current position: your device reports where it is, and that point becomes the code of the post office serving that area. There is no address database behind it. To find a specific office, use the Posta Kenya directory.

Is the code this tool shows me my postal code?

It is the code of the office serving where you are standing. If you rent a post office box, your postal code is the code of the office holding that box, which may be somewhere else entirely. No location lookup can tell you that.

Is 00100 the postal code for Nairobi?

No. 00100 is the code for the General Post Office. Other Nairobi offices have their own codes, and mail sent to a box number at 00100 goes to the GPO regardless of where the box actually is.

Why is the code written next to the box number?

Because together they identify one box at one office. A Kenyan address reads P.O. Box 34567 - 00100, Nairobi, and the two parts have to be copied together — box numbers are not unique between offices.

Why does my postal code start with zeros?

Nairobi and its surroundings use codes beginning with zeros, so 00100 is valid and 100 is not. If yours is showing short, it has been stored as a number somewhere and the zeros have been dropped.

What do I put on a form if I have no post office box?

The code of the office serving your area, which is what this lookup returns. That is what most forms are asking for, and couriers in Kenya generally work from the physical address and a phone number rather than from the code.

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