US ZIP Code Maps

Interactive ZIP code maps for 8 states and the country as a whole, drawn from the Census Bureau's ZIP Code Tabulation Areas rather than USPS delivery routes. Every state map is searchable by ZIP code, place name and county, and any area can be selected, colored and exported. The Census draws 33,791 ZIP areas nationally, and each map below shows how many it covers.

That distinction is not a technicality. It changes what these maps can and cannot be used for, and the section below explains why.

US 3-Digit ZIP Code Map

891 three-digit prefixes, each one a mail processing region. Hover a prefix to see which area it covers.

Open the full 3-digit ZIP code map →

Why a ZIP code map is not a USPS map

A USPS ZIP code is not an area. It is a set of delivery stops strung along carrier routes, invented to sort mail rather than to describe geography, and the Postal Service has never published it as a polygon. So every ZIP code map in existence, ours included, is an approximation built by somebody else.

The approximation nearly everyone uses, and the one these maps are drawn from, is the Census Bureau's ZIP Code Tabulation Area. The Census takes each census block, finds the ZIP code most of its addresses use, and groups the blocks by that answer. The fit is close in cities and loose in the countryside, where one carrier route can wander for miles.

Three consequences are worth knowing before you rely on any ZIP map:

  • Not every ZIP code has a shape. About 4,800 delivery ZIP codes, roughly one in eight, have no ZCTA at all, because they are PO-box-only, assigned to a single building, or military. They cannot be drawn, so they are absent from every map on this site.
  • Not every place has a ZIP code. Roughly a fifth of US land area sits inside no ZCTA. National parks, wilderness, desert and tundra show up as gaps, which is correct rather than missing. Each map shades that land separately and draws the border around the state itself, so the gaps read as unassigned rather than as missing pieces.
  • The boundaries are frozen. This is the 2020 delineation, and the Census will not redraw it until after the 2030 count, while USPS keeps changing ZIP codes in the meantime.

None of this makes ZIP maps less useful. For territories, coverage areas, service regions and any dataset that arrives keyed by ZIP, they are exactly the right tool. It does mean they are a geographic reference and not a legal one. Do not use them for property lines, tax districts, school zones, voting districts or emergency response areas.

Every state page carries the same caveats alongside its own numbers. The Texas ZIP code map is the largest at 1,990 areas, the California ZIP code map uses the most three-digit prefixes at 57, and the New York ZIP code map holds some of the smallest ZIP areas in the country.

ZIP code maps by state

Figures are the number of ZIP areas drawn on each map.

Frequently asked questions

No, and no public map is. USPS ZIP codes are routes, not areas. A ZIP code is a collection of delivery stops along carrier paths, and the Postal Service does not publish it as a polygon. Every ZIP code map you will find, including this one, is drawn from the Census Bureau's ZIP Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs), which approximate each ZIP by taking the census blocks where that ZIP is the most common address. The result matches closely in dense areas and loosely in rural ones. Treat these boundaries as a geographic reference, never as an official delivery, legal, tax, school or emergency-response boundary.

The Census Bureau draws 33,791 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas, and that is the number of ZIP areas you can see and color on these maps. The USPS figure is higher, because it counts codes that have no area to draw: PO-box-only ZIP codes, "unique" ZIP codes assigned to a single large building or organization, and military APO/FPO codes. About 4,800 delivery ZIP codes, roughly one in eight, have no ZCTA at all for that reason. The gap is not evenly spread either: dense cities are covered almost completely, while rural counties lose a larger share of their codes to PO-box-only delivery.

Because ZCTAs only cover land where people receive mail. Roughly a fifth of US land area sits inside no ZCTA at all: national parks, wilderness, large bodies of water, and unpopulated desert and tundra. On a state map this shows up as gaps, and those gaps are correct rather than missing data. The maps here shade that land in its own colour and draw the state border around the whole landmass, so you can tell unassigned ground from a hole in the data. The western states show it most. [California](/vector-maps/america/united-states-california-zip/) carries long stretches of federal land in the Sierra and the Mojave that no ZIP code reaches.

The boundaries are the Census Bureau's 2020 ZCTA delineation, which is the current vintage and is frozen until the Census redraws it after the 2030 count. The county and land-area figures in each state's table come from the same 2020 relationship file and the 2025 Census gazetteer. Individual ZIP codes do change between delineations, because USPS adds and retires them continuously, so a ZIP code created since 2020 will not appear until the next redraw. That cuts both ways: a handful of codes drawn here have since been retired by USPS, and the shapes stay on the map because the Census has not revised them. For a geographic reference this is usually what you want, since the boundaries hold still between one visit and the next.

The first three digits of a ZIP code identify a sectional center facility, the regional mail processing hub that serves everything beneath it. There are 891 of them nationally, against 33,791 five-digit areas, which is why a national ZIP map works at three digits and not at five. It is the map at the top of this page. Sales territories, service areas and delivery zones are very often defined at this level for exactly that reason. Every state uses at least two prefixes, and no state uses more than the 57 that California needs, so a prefix map of any single state stays small enough to label by hand.

Yes. Open any state map and click a ZIP area to select it, or open it in the editor to fill areas by category or by value. Categories suit territories, coverage areas, sales regions and anything else with one row per ZIP. Values shade each area on a scale from a number you supply, so a spreadsheet keyed by ZIP code matches straight onto the map with no geocoding step. ZIP codes with no drawn boundary cannot be shaded, and the editor reports those as unmatched rather than dropping them silently. Free exports are watermarked PNG. Removing the watermark and exporting SVG or PDF are Pro features.