Postbox Finder
Last update April 2023
Use this helpful postbox finder widget to find your nearest postbox (it may take a few seconds to load). It uses your current location and gives you directions to your closest letterbox.
Royal Mail isn’t the only letter delivery service – you can save up to 13%! of the cost of second class stamps if you post a letter with Whistl instead – click here for more information on how to post a letter with Whistl via Parcel2Go.
For more details about sending a letter including information on the types of letters, what qualifies as a letter, posting options and purchasing stamps, please see our letter guide and for information on envelopes see our envelope guide.
A brief background to the data behind this postbox finder tool
This tool to find your nearest postbox is only possible as Royal Mail was forced to disclose the location of all of its 116,000 postboxes by the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act.
In 2007 the Cabinet Office commissioned a report call “The Power of Information” which had the goal of better using the data that the government held to promote both economic and social good. The primary issue was that a lot of the government’s data is held by different departments and spread out amongst various sections of the civil service and public sector bodies.
To try and generate ideas to access and better use this data in 2008 the Cabinet Office launched the “Show Us a Better Way” competition to get the public to submit their ideas so the government could “improve health, education, justice or society at large” using their data.
The postbox location idea was put forward by a lady called Jenny Ingram, who was one of the six winners of the competition, so we would like to say thank you Jenny! Without you the postcode finder tool would not be possible!
A series of Freedom of information requests followed, which revealed both the postcodes of the postboxes as well as their collection times. A crowdsourcing effort then pinpointed every postbox in the UK on an openly licensed map.