Canada's postal codes are six characters in the pattern letter-digit-letter, space, digit-letter-digit, such as K1A 0B1. The first three characters are the forward sortation area (FSA), which identifies a region, and the last three are the local delivery unit (LDU), which can be as small as one side of a street or a single building.
Look up a postal code
Use the official Canada Post Find a Postal Code tool with the street address and city. Canada Post also offers a reverse lookup that returns the addresses served by a code.
The first letter tells you the province
| First letter | Province or territory |
|---|---|
| A | Newfoundland and Labrador |
| B | Nova Scotia |
| C | Prince Edward Island |
| E | New Brunswick |
| G, H, J | Quebec |
| K, L, M, N, P | Ontario |
| R | Manitoba |
| S | Saskatchewan |
| T | Alberta |
| V | British Columbia |
| X | Northwest Territories and Nunavut |
| Y | Yukon |
Writing a Canadian address
Put the postal code on the same line as the city and province, after the two-letter province abbreviation, with a single space between the two halves: OTTAWA ON K1A 0B1. Keep the letters uppercase and never drop the space to fit a numeric ZIP field; if a U.S. form insists on digits only, ask the merchant how to proceed.
Not a U.S. ZIP
Our reference data covers U.S. ZIP codes only, so a Canadian code will not be found in the ZIP code lookup. For the difference between the systems see ZIP code vs. postal code.