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Mailing List Builder: pick an area, see who lives there
Search a city or ZIP, draw an area, or pick a Congressional, State Senate or State Assembly district. You get the household count for what you selected, the income, homeownership and age profile behind it, and what the postage costs to mail it.
What the numbers are
- Households from the Census American Community Survey, by ZIP code area.
- Filters from the Census distribution tables for each ZIP, so one filter is a published count.
- Postage from the USPS Notice 123 rates we mail at.
Selection is by ZIP code area, so a shape you draw takes every ZIP whose center falls inside it, and the map outlines exactly which ones you got. Use the draw tools at the top left, the search, or the district tab.
Selects every ZIP code area whose center falls inside the district.
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We build the CASS-certified, NCOA-updated mailing list after you order. These counts are for planning.
Household counts and demographics: ACS 5-year 2023 (table-based summary file), gazetteer 2024 - built by tools/build_zcta_profile.py. ZIP code and district boundaries: US Census TIGERweb. Covering 32,828 ZIP code areas and 128,701,376 US households.
What this tool does
Counts you can put in front of a client
Every number on this page comes from a published source and names it. The household count for an area is the Census figure for the ZIP code areas you selected. The filters read that area's own distribution tables rather than applying a national average, so asking for homeowners returns the owner-occupied count for those exact ZIPs.
One filter is an exact count
Income, householder age, tenure and children each come from a Census table published for every ZIP code area. Apply one and the number you see is that published figure for your selection, labeled Exact count.
Two filters is an estimate, and says so
The Census publishes those tables separately, so combining homeowners with an income band means assuming the two are independent. That is a modeled figure, and the panel labels it Estimate rather than presenting it as a count.
Postage at the rates we mail
The postage line uses the USPS Notice 123 rates loaded in our production system, at the shape your mailpiece takes. Printing is not priced here because it depends on stock, finishing and run length, which is a quote rather than a number a planning page should assert.
What this page does not tell you is who those households are as people. Lifestyle and purchase-behavior targeting comes from consumer data providers rather than the Census, and we would rather source it properly and tell you what it costs than approximate it here. The counts above describe an area; the final count comes from the list itself, after CASS standardization, NCOALink move update and deduplication. That work is included when you order, and you can run it on your own data with the address list tool in a free account.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Where do these household counts come from?
The American Community Survey five-year estimates published by the US Census Bureau, at the ZIP code tabulation area level, bundled into our system and refreshed when the Census publishes a new release. The exact release in use is printed under the map. ZIP code and district boundaries come from Census TIGERweb. There is no API key in this page and no call to a data broker.
Is this a mailing list I can download?
No. This tool counts and prices an area so you can plan a campaign. The mailing list itself is built when you order: addresses are CASS standardized, run through NCOALink for movers, deduplicated and presorted for postage. That file is what gets mailed, and its final count is usually a little different from an area estimate.
How accurate are the filtered counts?
A single filter is an exact published count for the ZIPs you selected. Combining two or more is an estimate, because the Census publishes each distribution separately and combining them assumes they are independent. The panel labels which one you are looking at.
Can I select by political district?
Yes. Choose a state and a Congressional, State Senate or State Assembly district and the tool selects every ZIP code area whose center falls inside it, then outlines the district on the map. Because the selection is ZIP-level, a ZIP that straddles a district line is either in or out as a whole, which is also how a ZIP-targeted mailing behaves.
Why is there no printing price?
Because an honest one needs a conversation. Printing depends on the stock, the finishing, whether the piece folds or tabs, and the run length. Send the selection through and you get printing, data processing and postage in one quote.
Can I mail everyone in an area without a list?
Yes, that is saturation mail or EDDM, where you cover whole carrier routes rather than selected households. It carries the lowest postage rates and needs no list. The EDDM route builder is the tool for that.
Ready to mail this area?
Send the selection through and we will quote the list, the printing and the postage together, with the data sources named.