9 October 2026 · Market Data & Data APIs · 4 min read
For over a decade, verifying a US address cost nothing if you used the USPS's own Web Tools Addresses API. Register, get a key, standardize addresses, no bill ever. That API is gone. USPS fully retired Web Tools on January 25, 2026, and the specific free version of the Addresses API stopped working on July 12. The replacement that went live August 1 isn't free, isn't instant, and isn't even the same kind of sign-up — you now need a signed license agreement before USPS hands over credentials at all. I pulled the new rate card and ran it against Smarty and Lob to see where the free option actually left you.
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| Jan 25, 2026 | USPS Web Tools platform fully retired |
| Jul 12, 2026 | Legacy free Addresses API discontinued |
| Aug 1, 2026 | New paid consumption-tier Addresses API goes live, license agreement required |
Three separate cutoffs, six months apart, which is exactly the kind of staggered rollout that lets a breaking change slip past people who only check release notes once. If your app verified addresses through USPS and you haven't touched that integration since last winter, it's very possibly dead right now, not just more expensive.
The published rate: $10 flat for the first 2,000 lookups in a month, then $4.50 per 1,000 up to 10,000, $4.25 per 1,000 up to 50,000, and $4.00 per 1,000 beyond that. Here's that against Lob's cheapest available plan at the same volumes — Lob never had a free tier either, but it never needed a license agreement:
| Lookups/month | USPS (2026 rate) | Lob (cheapest plan) |
|---|---|---|
| 2,000 | $10.00 | $50.00 |
| 10,000 | $45.00 | $250.00 |
| 50,000 | $212.50 | $450.00 |
| 100,000 | $400.00 | $900.00 |
USPS actually comes out cheaper than Lob at every volume I checked — the surprise isn't that the free tier is gone, it's that the paid replacement still undercuts the self-serve alternative on raw price. What it doesn't undercut is friction: Lob's $0.05/lookup pay-as-you-go rate works from your very first API call, no subscription, no agreement to sign. USPS's cheaper rate comes with paperwork first.
If you're under about 2,000 lookups a month and can tolerate the license-agreement process, the new USPS tier is still the cheapest option on the table at $10/month flat — that part of "free government API" logic still basically holds, it's just not free anymore. If you need to ship this week and can't wait on a signed agreement, Smarty's 42-day free trial (1,000 lookups, no card) or Lob's instant pay-as-you-go key get you validating addresses in the next five minutes, at a real but modest premium over USPS's rate. Either way, don't assume your old USPS integration is still billing you $0 — if it was built before this year, go check whether it's even still returning results.
New to usage-based API pricing? Start with the free API-cost guides.
Deploy it yourself: DigitalOcean — $200 free credit ↗ · Hostinger VPS ↗
USPS timeline and rates per industry coverage of the 2026 USPS Addresses API fee change (reporting checked against usps.com business API documentation); Smarty and Lob pricing verified against their official pricing pages. Checked 2026-10-09. Reference estimates, not live quotes — confirm current terms directly with each provider, especially USPS's license-agreement process, before budgeting.