UK Postcode Areas Map: Click Any Area for Its Districts and Sectors
Every UK postcode area on one map. Click GU to see its 38 districts, click GU11 to see its sectors, and keep going. Built from the May 2026 ONS Postcode Directory, covering 1,746,976 postcodes across 120 areas, 2,843 districts and 10,347 sectors.
Postcode areas, districts and sectors
Every UK postcode breaks down into four levels. Take SW7 2DD, the Science Museum, as a worked example:
The first one or two letters. 120 postcode areas in the UK.
The area plus a number. 2,863 postcode districts in the UK.
The district plus the first digit after the space. 10,839 postcode sectors in the UK.
The full postcode, usually a handful of addresses. 1,746,976 unit postcodes in the UK.
What people use this for
See district and sector boundaries when splitting the UK between reps, depots or drivers.
Check which postcode districts and sectors fall inside or outside a service area.
Click any point on the map to see the area, district and sector it belongs to.
Browse how UK postcodes are structured, from whole areas down to individual sectors.
How the boundaries are made
Royal Mail postcodes are delivery routes, not areas of land, so no official postcode boundary map exists. Every postcode map you'll find, including the ones people sell, is derived from postcode locations rather than drawn from an official source. Ours is too, and here's how.
We take all 1,746,976 postcode locations from the ONS Postcode Directory and give each one the ground closest to it, then group those by area, district and sector. The result is an accurate picture of which postcodes are where, and an approximation of where one district ends and the next begins.
How accurate: at area level, 99.98% of postcodes fall inside their own boundary. At district level, 99.54%. At sector level, 99.29%. What remains comes almost entirely from the source data itself, where postcodes in different areas share an identical coordinate, usually a large building with its own mail routing. No boundary can separate two points that are the same point.
Boundaries are simplified for drawing, more at area level than at sector level, so a shape you see on screen is slightly smoother than the underlying data. Clicking always answers from the postcode data itself, never from the drawn shape, so what you're told is right even where the outline is approximate.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are all the postcode areas in the UK?
There are 124 postcode areas in the UK. 120 have location data available and are shown on this map. The other 4 are BT (Northern Ireland), and JE, GY and IM (the Channel Islands and Isle of Man).
How many postcode districts are there in the UK?
2,863, of which 2,843 cover a geographic area. The other 20 are non-geographic codes used for large organisations and PO boxes; they have postcodes but no territory, so they're listed rather than drawn.
What's the difference between a postcode area, district and sector?
In SW7 2DD (the Science Museum), SW is the area, SW7 is the district, SW7 2 is the sector, and the whole thing is the unit postcode. This map lets you drill down through all three.
How do I show postcode areas on Google Maps?
Google Maps doesn't have a postcode boundary layer. This map shows the boundaries directly, or you can export a postcode list and plot it with our postcode mapper.
How do I find a postcode on a map?
Type it in the search box, or click anywhere on the map and you'll be told the nearest real postcode and which area, district and sector it belongs to.
Are these the official postcode boundaries?
No official ones exist. Royal Mail doesn't publish postcode boundaries because postcodes are delivery routes rather than areas. These are derived from postcode locations, with the accuracy stated above.
Related Guides & Tools
More postcode and mapping tools on MapTools.uk:
- UK Counties and Councils - postcode areas are a Royal Mail delivery construct; if you want the council, ward or constituency a postcode falls in instead, use this
- Postcode Mapper - plot your own list of postcodes on a map
- Territory Mapper - split the UK into sales territories between your bases
- Nearest Postcodes - find the closest postcodes to any UK location
- Postcode to Lat/Long - convert one postcode at a time to coordinates
Data and licensing
Postcode locations from the ONS Postcode Directory, May 2026 edition. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. Contains Royal Mail data © Royal Mail copyright and database right 2026. Source: Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v.3.0
Coastline from Ordnance Survey Boundary-Line, 2026-05. Contains OS data. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.