GetMyPostalCode

Find Your Postal Code in Singapore

A Singapore postal code is unusually precise: six digits that identify a specific building rather than a district. Press the button and your position becomes the postal code covering that spot, so you can check it against the building you are in.

Your location is only used to find your postal code.

Postal Code

238801

Singapore

Example

The Postal Code Format

Format

Six digits, written without a space (238801)

Example

238801

A Singapore postal code is six digits, written with no space. The first two are the sector. The last four identify the delivery point within it, which in practice means a particular building.

Leading zeros are real. Codes in the low sectors begin with 0, so 018956 is valid and 18956 is not. Stored as a number anywhere in the chain, the zero vanishes and the code stops matching anything.

Because the code goes down to the building, a Singapore address is often written as the postal code plus a unit number and very little else. A block number, a street name and the six digits is a complete address, and couriers routinely work from the code alone.

What Each Part of a Postal Code Means

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

Breakdown of each part of a Singapore postal code
PartIdentifiesWhat it means
Digits 1-2Postal sectorOne of the sectors the island is divided into. These were carried over from the last two digits of the older four-digit scheme, which is why they are not in geographic order.
Digits 3-6Delivery pointIdentifies the specific delivery point inside the sector — in practice a single building, whether that is an HDB block, a condominium or an office tower.
All sixBuilding-level precisionTogether they resolve to one building, which is why the code plus a unit number is usually enough to deliver against without a street name.

How postal codes work in Singapore

Singapore moved from a four-digit postal code to the current six-digit one on 1 September 1995, and the change was not cosmetic. The old scheme had room for roughly ten thousand codes, which is enough to divide an island into districts and nothing more. The new one has room for around a million, which is enough to give every building its own.

That is exactly what was done, and it is the defining feature of the system. In most countries a postal code describes an area containing many addresses. Here it describes a structure. Two towers on the same street have different codes; a single large development may hold several.

The first two digits were deliberately carried over from the final two digits of the old four-digit codes, which is why the sectors are not laid out in any sensible geographic order. Somebody using the system in 1995 kept the numbers they already knew, and the island has lived with the resulting arrangement ever since. There is no way to reason about where a sector is from its number; it has to be looked up.

The practical effect of building-level codes is that Singaporean addressing is extraordinarily compact. A postal code and a unit number name a front door. Delivery services, taxi apps and food couriers all lean on this, and it is why forms here ask for the postal code first and then fill in the rest of the address from it.

The flip side is that the code is only as current as the building stock. Singapore redevelops aggressively, and codes are assigned to new buildings as they are completed, so a very new address may be ahead of whatever data a third-party service holds.

Why a postal code here names a building

It is worth pausing on how unusual this is. A US ZIP code can cover tens of thousands of people. A UK unit postcode covers about fifteen addresses, which already counts as very fine. A Singapore postal code covers one building.

That changes what the code is for. Elsewhere a postal code is a sorting instruction and the street address does the identifying. Here the code does the identifying, and the street address is almost a courtesy — useful for a human reading the envelope, not strictly needed to deliver it.

It also changes what the code reveals. Six digits plus a unit number is a precise statement of where somebody lives or works, far more identifying than a postal code in most countries. That is worth bearing in mind when a site asks for one alongside other personal details.

For a location lookup, this precision cuts both ways. The answer is specific enough to be genuinely useful. It is also specific enough that standing in the wrong part of a large development, or indoors where the fix is poor, can return the building next door.

Sectors are not in geographic order

A reasonable expectation of any postal code is that nearby places have nearby numbers. That expectation does not hold in Singapore, and it trips up anyone who tries to reason about the codes rather than look them up.

The sectors came from the previous four-digit system, taken from its last two digits rather than reassigned from scratch. The result is an arrangement that made sense to the people who built the old scheme and makes very little sense on a map today. Adjacent sectors are not adjacent places, and sorting postal codes numerically does not sort them geographically.

Anything that needs to know whether two addresses are close together should work from coordinates, not from the numeric distance between their postal codes. That is true everywhere to some degree; here it is absolute.

Where a lookup and SingPost can disagree

This tool answers which postal code covers the point your device reported. SingPost answers which code belongs to a specific building. Because the code is building-level, the two questions are closer together here than anywhere else — and that makes the failure mode sharper rather than softer.

In a dense area with towers close together, a fix that is out by thirty metres can land on the neighbouring building and return its code. Indoors, in a basement car park or in a mall, that is entirely plausible, and nothing about the result will look wrong.

So treat a lookup as a fast way to find your sector and check a code looks plausible, not as the authority on which building you are in. For anything consequential, confirm against the official SingPost postal code search using the block and street.

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 postal code covering it. There is no address database behind it. To search from a block and street, use the SingPost postal code search.

Does one postal code really mean one building?

Broadly yes. The six-digit system was introduced in 1995 specifically to give buildings their own codes, which is why a postal code plus a unit number is usually a complete address here.

Why does my postal code start with a zero?

Because the low sectors legitimately begin with 0. If it is showing as five digits somewhere, it has been stored as a number and the leading zero has been dropped. Postal codes should always be kept as text.

Why are nearby places not numbered near each other?

The first two digits were carried over from the last two digits of the old four-digit system rather than reallocated geographically. Sector numbers therefore have no useful spatial order and cannot be reasoned about.

Can I use just the postal code as my address?

For delivery within Singapore the code plus a unit number identifies the destination, and couriers commonly work that way. For forms, official documents and anything international, write the full address as well.

Why did the lookup return the building next door?

Because the codes are building-level and your device reports a position with some margin of error. Indoors, in a basement or among closely packed towers, a small error is enough to cross into the next code.

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