Zip Codes and FIPS

April 29, 2009 10:33 AM

Where can I get a free dataset of ZIP codes and their corresponding county FIPS codes?
posted by chrisalbon to work & money (5 comments total)

If I remember correctly, the Census has this. Try here, there seems to be a lot of info about FIPS in general.
posted by schyler523 at 10:43 AM on April 29

I haven't been able to find a recent enough free version to be useful in my work, but zipcodeworld has this for a very nominal $60 - more if you need to get monthly updates.
posted by jenkinsEar at 11:03 AM on April 29

http://www.census.gov/geo/www/gazetteer/places2k.html

specifically these files.
http://www.census.gov/tiger/tms/gazetteer/zcta5.txt
posted by fozzie33 at 11:04 AM on April 29

Just one note about the Census resources that people might be recommending: ZIP Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs) are not the same thing as ZIP Codes. They are geographically rectified tabulation areas based on ZIP Codes in 2000. Whenever the addresses within a census block had a mixed group of ZIP codes, Census Bureau took the odd ones out and simply reassigned their ZIP code to that of the majority of the other addresses in that block.

Also, ZCTAs were last created in 2000, and have not been updated since. That means all of the ZIPs that have been created, split, subdivided or changed since 2000 are not represented in lists or databases using ZCTAs.

If you need ZIP codes, not ZCTAs, you're not going to get anything from the Census Bureau. The Census Bureau ceased creating ZIP code geographic products after the 1990 Census.
posted by Eldritch at 11:30 AM on April 29

Oh, and ZCTAs don't include any of the unique ZIP Codes: PO Boxes, mailing facilities, office buildings, etc.
posted by Eldritch at 11:37 AM on April 29