Technical specification

This technical specification explains the content of the OS Places API and the methods that you can use to call it.

If you are not familiar with the OS Places API, please read the overview documentation before proceeding.

Core concepts

This specification does not cover core concepts that apply to all Ordnance Survey APIs.

Please read the following pages to learn more about OS API core concepts:

• Authentication

• Error codes

• Rate-limiting policy

API reference

OS Places API has seven types of requests, that fall into two categories:

Capture and verification

Find

Return matched addresses based on a free text search.

Postcode

Return matched addresses based on a property's postcode.

UPRN

Return matched addresses based on a UPRN.

GeoSearch

Nearest

Return the closest addresses to a pair of coordinates (X and Y).

BBOX

Return matched addresses within a bounding box.

Radius

Return addresses that intersect a radius.

Polygon

Return matched addresses within a GeoJSON polygon or multi-polygon object.