UK Postcode Regex (Comprehensive)

Question

I'm after a regex that will validate a full complex UK postcode only within an input string. All of the uncommon postcode forms must be covered as well as the usual. For instance:

Matches

• CW3 9SS
• SE5 0EG
• SE50EG
• se5 0eg
• WC2H 7LT

No Match

• aWC2H 7LT
• WC2H 7LTa
• WC2H

Are there any official or even semi-official regexes in use for this kind of thing? Any other advice as to formatting and storing these in a database?

Answer 1

I have the regex for UK Postcode validation.

This is working for all type of Postcode either inner or outer

^((([A-PR-UWYZ][0-9])|([A-PR-UWYZ][0-9][0-9])|([A-PR-UWYZ][A-HK-Y][0-9])|([A-PR-UWYZ][A-HK-Y][0-9][0-9])|([A-PR-UWYZ][0-9][A-HJKSTUW])|([A-PR-UWYZ][A-HK-Y][0-9][ABEHMNPRVWXY]))) || ^((GIR)[ ]?(0AA))$|^(([A-PR-UWYZ][0-9])[ ]?([0-9][ABD-HJLNPQ-UW-Z]{0,2}))$|^(([A-PR-UWYZ][0-9][0-9])[ ]?([0-9][ABD-HJLNPQ-UW-Z]{0,2}))$|^(([A-PR-UWYZ][A-HK-Y0-9][0-9])[ ]?([0-9][ABD-HJLNPQ-UW-Z]{0,2}))$|^(([A-PR-UWYZ][A-HK-Y0-9][0-9][0-9])[ ]?([0-9][ABD-HJLNPQ-UW-Z]{0,2}))$|^(([A-PR-UWYZ][0-9][A-HJKS-UW0-9])[ ]?([0-9][ABD-HJLNPQ-UW-Z]{0,2}))$|^(([A-PR-UWYZ][A-HK-Y0-9][0-9][ABEHMNPRVWXY0-9])[ ]?([0-9][ABD-HJLNPQ-UW-Z]{0,2}))$

This is working for all type of format.

Example:

AB10-------------------->ONLY OUTER POSTCODE

A1 1AA------------------>COMBINATION OF (OUTER AND INNER) POSTCODE

WC2A-------------------->OUTER

Answer 2

An old post but still pretty high in google results so thought I'd update. This Oct 14 doc defines the UK postcode regular expression as:

^([Gg][Ii][Rr] 0[Aa]{2})|((([A-Za-z][0-9]{1,2})|(([A-Za-z][A-Ha-hJ-Yj-y][0-9]{1,2})|(([**AZ**a-z][0-9][A-Za-z])|([A-Za-z][A-Ha-hJ-Yj-y][0-9]?[A-Za-z])))) [0-9][A-Za-z]{2})$

from:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/359448/4__Bulk_Data_Transfer_-_additional_validation_valid.pdf

The document also explains the logic behind it. However, it has an error (bolded) and also allows lower case, which although legal is not usual, so amended version:

^(GIR 0AA)|((([A-Z][0-9]{1,2})|(([A-Z][A-HJ-Y][0-9]{1,2})|(([A-Z][0-9][A-Z])|([A-Z][A-HJ-Y][0-9]?[A-Z])))) [0-9][A-Z]{2})$

This works with new London postcodes (e.g. W1D 5LH) that previous versions did not.

Answer 3

I use the following regex that I have tested against all valid UK postcodes. It is based on the recommended rules, but condensed as much as reasonable and does not make use of any special language specific regex rules.

([A-PR-UWYZ]([A-HK-Y][0-9]([0-9]|[ABEHMNPRV-Y])?|[0-9]([0-9]|[A-HJKPSTUW])?) ?[0-9][ABD-HJLNP-UW-Z]{2})

It assumes that the postcode has been converted to uppercase and has not leading or trailing characters, but will accept an optional space between the outcode and incode.

The special "GIR0 0AA" postcode is excluded and will not validate as it's not in the official Post Office list of postcodes and as far as I'm aware will not be used as registered address. Adding it should be trivial as a special case if required.

Answer 4

The accepted answer reflects the rules given by Royal Mail, although there is a typo in the regex. This typo seems to have been in there on the gov.uk site as well (as it is in the XML archive page).

In the format A9A 9AA the rules allow a P character in the third position, whilst the regex disallows this. The correct regex would be:

(GIR 0AA)|((([A-Z-[QVX]][0-9][0-9]?)|(([A-Z-[QVX]][A-Z-[IJZ]][0-9][0-9]?)|(([A-Z-[QVX]][0-9][A-HJKPSTUW])|([A-Z-[QVX]][A-Z-[IJZ]][0-9][ABEHMNPRVWXY])))) [0-9][A-Z-[CIKMOV]]{2}) 

Shortening this results in the following regex (which uses Perl/Ruby syntax):

(GIR 0AA)|([A-PR-UWYZ](([0-9]([0-9A-HJKPSTUW])?)|([A-HK-Y][0-9]([0-9ABEHMNPRVWXY])?))\s?[0-9][ABD-HJLNP-UW-Z]{2})

It also includes an optional space between the first and second block.

Answer 5

I had a look into some of the answers above and I'd recommend against using the pattern from @Dan's answer (c. Dec 15 '10), since it incorrectly flags almost 0.4% of valid postcodes as invalid, while the others do not.

Ordnance Survey provide service called Code Point Open which:

contains a list of all the current postcode units in Great Britain

I ran each of the regexs above against the full list of postcodes (Jul 6 '13) from this data using grep:

cat CSV/*.csv |
    # Strip leading quotes
    sed -e 's/^"//g' |
    # Strip trailing quote and everything after it
    sed -e 's/".*//g' |
    # Strip any spaces
    sed -E -e 's/ +//g' |
    # Find any lines that do not match the expression
    grep --invert-match --perl-regexp "$pattern"

There are 1,686,202 postcodes total.

The following are the numbers of valid postcodes that do not match each $pattern:

'^([A-PR-UWYZ0-9][A-HK-Y0-9][AEHMNPRTVXY0-9]?[ABEHMNPRVWXY0-9]?[0-9][ABD-HJLN-UW-Z]{2}|GIR 0AA)$'
# => 6016 (0.36%)

'^(GIR ?0AA|[A-PR-UWYZ]([0-9]{1,2}|([A-HK-Y][0-9]([0-9ABEHMNPRV-Y])?)|[0-9][A-HJKPS-UW]) ?[0-9][ABD-HJLNP-UW-Z]{2})$'
# => 0

'^GIR[ ]?0AA|((AB|AL|B|BA|BB|BD|BH|BL|BN|BR|BS|BT|BX|CA|CB|CF|CH|CM|CO|CR|CT|CV|CW|DA|DD|DE|DG|DH|DL|DN|DT|DY|E|EC|EH|EN|EX|FK|FY|G|GL|GY|GU|HA|HD|HG|HP|HR|HS|HU|HX|IG|IM|IP|IV|JE|KA|KT|KW|KY|L|LA|LD|LE|LL|LN|LS|LU|M|ME|MK|ML|N|NE|NG|NN|NP|NR|NW|OL|OX|PA|PE|PH|PL|PO|PR|RG|RH|RM|S|SA|SE|SG|SK|SL|SM|SN|SO|SP|SR|SS|ST|SW|SY|TA|TD|TF|TN|TQ|TR|TS|TW|UB|W|WA|WC|WD|WF|WN|WR|WS|WV|YO|ZE)(\d[\dA-Z]?[ ]?\d[ABD-HJLN-UW-Z]{2}))|BFPO[ ]?\d{1,4}$'
# => 0

Of course, these results only deal with valid postcodes that are incorrectly flagged as invalid. So:

'^.*$'
# => 0

I'm saying nothing about which pattern is the best regarding filtering out invalid postcodes.

Answer 6

Most of the answers here didn't work for all the postcodes I have in my database. I finally found one that validates with all, using the new regex provided by the government:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/413338/Bulk_Data_Transfer_-_additional_validation_valid_from_March_2015.pdf

It isn't in any of the previous answers so I post it here in case they take the link down:

^([Gg][Ii][Rr] 0[Aa]{2})|((([A-Za-z][0-9]{1,2})|(([A-Za-z][A-Ha-hJ-Yj-y][0-9]{1,2})|(([A-Za-z][0-9][A-Za-z])|([A-Za-z][A-Ha-hJ-Yj-y][0-9]?[A-Za-z])))) [0-9][A-Za-z]{2})$

UPDATE: Updated regex as pointed by Jamie Bull. Not sure if it was my error copying or it was an error in the government's regex, the link is down now...

UPDATE: As ctwheels found, this regex works with the javascript regex flavor. See his comment for one that works with the pcre (php) flavor.