Countries · France

France: 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.

Try it on an address API documentation

What an address looks like

House number·before the street (“12 Rue de la Paix”)
Postcode·5 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

The house number comes before the street (“3 rue de la République”), with “bis” and “ter” attached to the number. The postcode identifies the commune and, in the big cities, the arrondissement: 75004 is the 4th of Paris, and the national register treats each arrondissement of Paris, Lyon and Marseille as a municipality of its own. The city is written in full and in capitals, without the article.

What we verify

Addresses: the whole country · postcodes: 100% · data as of 14 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
Arrondissement·in Paris, Lyon and Marseille it comes out separately, the city stays the city

Source : Base Adresse Nationale · Licence Ouverte (Etalab)

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.

1 place du capitole, F-31000 toulouse → 1 Place du Capitole
31000 TOULOUSE postcode fixed · coordinates of the house number
10 pl. de la comédie, 34 000 montpellier → 10 Place de la Comédie
34000 MONTPELLIER street written in full · coordinates of the house number
3, rue de la république, 69001 LYON → 3 Rue de la République
69001 LYON district: Lyon 1er Arrondissement · 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":"1 place du capitole","postcode":"F-31000","city":"toulouse","country_code":"FR"}'

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: Source : Base Adresse Nationale (Licence Ouverte (Etalab)). The register is checked every night and reloaded when the source changes.

The other countries

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