Canada postal codes in a radius

How to use it

Search for a place, type a postal code in “Center on a postal code” (a full one like M5V 3L9 or just the FSA), use your location or tap the map to set the center, then choose the radius. You can also drag the edge of the circle. The list is sorted from nearest to farthest; tap an FSA to see it on the map.

Choose which FSAs count: those whose center is within the radius, or every one the circle touches, even a little, with the share of each inside. “Copy the codes” gives you the list with commas or one per line, and Download CSV adds the municipality, the province, the population, the area, the distance and the coordinates.

5 km around Union Station

Within 5 km (3.1 miles) of Union Station, in Toronto, there are 21 FSAs with their center inside, or 28 counting every one the circle touches. The ones with their center inside have 527,592 people. The closest are M5H (Toronto), M5J (Toronto) and M5E (Toronto).

Why FSAs and not full postal codes

A Canadian postal code has six characters (M5V 3L9). The first three are the FSA (forward sortation area): the letter is the province or part of it (M is Toronto, H Montreal, V British Columbia) and the digit tells urban from rural (a 0 is a large rural area). The last three narrow it down to a block, a building or a PO box.

Full postal codes belong to Canada Post, which licenses them for a fee: they aren’t open data, so we don’t offer them. FSAs are: Statistics Canada publishes their boundaries and census population. There are 1,643 FSAs, 181 of them rural, with 36,991,795 people in the 2021 Census. The most populated is J0K (Rawdon), with 149,238; the largest, X0A (Iqaluit), at 970,388 km².

Where the data comes from

The boundaries are Statistics Canada’s 2021 Census FSA boundary file, drawn from the postal codes people wrote on the census questionnaire: a very close approximation of Canada Post’s FSAs. Population is the 2021 Census count by FSA (table 98-10-0019-01). We draw them simplified: about 60 meters of detail in cities, and coarser in rural areas, which are huge.

Each FSA’s point is where its people live: the point of its dissemination area (the smallest census areas, about 500 people each) closest to the center of gravity of its population. That way an FSA with a neighborhood and a stretch of countryside isn’t placed in the countryside. Its municipality is the census subdivision with the most people in it; others with at least 10% are listed too. It’s all Statistics Canada data, under the Open Government Licence – Canada and the Statistics Canada Open Licence, which allow any use with attribution.

What it’s for

Setting a delivery or service area, planning a leaflet drop or an ad campaign by FSA (Canada Post and ad platforms both take them), splitting territory between sales reps, or finding out how many people live in the areas you cover.