Countries · Switzerland

Switzerland: 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·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

Switzerland writes the address in the language of the canton: “Bahnhofstrasse 1” in Zurich (with “ss”, never “ß”), “Rue de l'Hôtel-de-Ville 2” in Geneva, “Via Nassa 5” in Lugano. The house number follows the street in every language region; the postcode has four digits. The federal register covers every canton in the same form.

What we verify

Addresses: the whole country · postcodes: 100% · data as of 27 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

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.

bundesplatz 3, CH-3005 bern → Bundesplatz 3
3011 BERN postcode fixed · coordinates of the house number
bahnhofstr. 1, 8001 zürich → Bahnhofstrasse 1
8001 ZÜRICH street written in full · coordinates of the house number
rue de l'hôtel-de-ville 2, genève → Rue de l'Hôtel-de-Ville 2
1204 GENÈVE 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":"bundesplatz 3","postcode":"CH-3005","city":"bern","country_code":"CH"}'

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: © swisstopo; Bundesamt für Statistik (BFS), Eidgenössisches Gebäude- und Wohnungsregister (GWR) (OGD swisstopo (uso libero, fonte obbligatoria)). The register is checked every night and reloaded when the source changes.

The other countries

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