Data Sources and Method

Sources

• Post offices and PIN codes: India Post, All India Pincode Directory (data.gov.in), Government Open Data License - India. List dated 3 Oct 2025. 1,65,625 offices, 19,586 PIN codes.
• Villages: Ministry of Panchayati Raj, Local Government Directory: villages with PIN codes (data.gov.in), Government Open Data License - India. List dated 1 Sep 2026. 6,77,323 villages.
• Towns and local bodies: Ministry of Panchayati Raj, Local Government Directory: local bodies with PIN codes (data.gov.in), Government Open Data License - India. List dated 20 Oct 2026.
• DIGIPIN: calculated with India Post's open-source DIGIPIN encoder (Apache-2.0).
• Mapped addresses with a PIN (1,94,733 points) used by the PIN finder, and map links: © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0. The tool's lookup files (/t/) contain these points and are available under the same licence.
• Roads, railways, rivers and lakes on the PIN maps: © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0 (main roads down to tertiary, simplified to about 10 m).

The PIN maps

India Post doesn't publish PIN boundaries, so each map is our estimate: every spot takes the PIN of the nearest post office or mapped address with a PIN, and the result is smoothed into outlines. Areas and middle points on the PIN pages come from these maps and are approximate.

Cleaning

About 7% of offices have no map position in the official list and 1.6% have impossible ones. We drop a position when it lies more than 30 km from the other offices with the same PIN, or more than 120 km from the offices of its own district. 715 offices have no state or district in the list; we fill them from the other offices with the same PIN, or from the offices sharing the PIN's first three digits (India Post's sorting district).

How the PIN finder works

Your browser gives your position. The page downloads the post offices and the mapped addresses with a PIN around you and lets the nearest ones vote, closer ones counting more. A PIN is a delivery area while a post office is one point in it, so the nearest office's PIN is not always yours. In our test on 8,000 mapped addresses across India that the tool had not seen, its first answer was right 82% of the time, and the right PIN was among the three it shows 93% of the time. That's why we always show the other PINs around you.

Found a mistake? Tell us.