Countries · Belgium

Belgium: how an address is written and what we verify

Every address in the country comes back in the national postal form and is checked against the national address register: street, house number, postcode, coordinates. Here you find how an address is written there, what we check and three before-and-after examples.

What an address looks like

  • House number·after the street (“Hauptstraße 5”)
  • Postcode·4 digits; the country prefix in front (D-, F-, CH-) is removed
  • City·in capitals, in its local name
  • Country·country line and ISO code, in the reader's language

Belgium has three official languages and its addresses exist in two forms in the bilingual areas: “Wetstraat 16” and “Rue de la Loi 16” are the same address in Brussels, and the register keeps both. The house number follows the street in every language; the postcode has four digits and in the big cities distinguishes the surrounding municipalities (1000 Brussels, 1050 Ixelles).

What we verify

Addresses: the whole country · postcodes: 100% · data as of 28 Sep 2026.

  • Street·exists in the municipality, written in full and in the register's spelling; abbreviations are expanded in the country's language
  • House number·exists on that street; if the street exists and the number does not, the outcome flags it
  • Postcode·confirmed or filled in by the register, in the country's format
  • Coordinates·latitude and longitude of the house number, with the precision declared
  • Autocomplete·the street completes as you type, from the register; the house number and the postcode come with the selection (API)
  • WooCommerce · PrestaShop·autocomplete at checkout and order verification with the plugins

BeST Address © FPS BOSA – Digitaal Vlaanderen, Paradigm, Service public de Wallonie · CC BY 4.0

Before and after

Three addresses written the way people write them — abbreviated, without postcode, in lower case — and how they come out: public buildings and streets of the city centre, verified down to the house number.

  • wetstraat 16, B-1000 brussel → Wetstraat 16
    1000 BRUXELLES postcode fixed · city in postal form · coordinates of the house number
  • rue de la loi 16, 1000 bruxelles → Rue de la Loi 16
    1000 BRUXELLES coordinates of the house number
  • grote markt 1, antwerpen → Grote Markt 1
    2000 ANTWERPEN postcode filled in · coordinates of the house number

With the API

The same endpoint as every country: country_code is enough. The response carries the address in postal form, the outcome with the changes, and where the register is in service the coordinates, the municipality code and the district. Everything in the API documentation.

curl -X POST https://www.radaraddress.com/api/v1/contact \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"address":"wetstraat 16","postcode":"B-1000","city":"brussel","country_code":"BE"}'

Frequently asked questions

Do you also verify addresses that are in a file?

Yes. In batch jobs a column with the country is enough, or the country set for the whole file: every row comes back in the country's postal form, with the outcome beside it and, where the register is in service, verified down to the house number.

What happens if an address is not in the register?

We say so. If the street exists and the house number does not, the outcome flags the house number; if the street is not found in the municipality, the address still comes out in the country's postal form, with the warning. We never invent a plausible address in place of the one that is missing.

Where do the data come from?

From the national address register, published as open data by the country's mapping or statistics agency, which we use under the licence it requires: BeST Address © FPS BOSA – Digitaal Vlaanderen, Paradigm, Service public de Wallonie (CC BY 4.0). The register is checked every night and reloaded when the source changes.