The National Address

The National Address is an address system adopted by the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to facilitate the identification of home addresses, government headquarters, and commercial establishments. It was devised in 2013 by the Saudi Post and approved by the Saudi Council of Ministers in the same year, making it the main reference for addresses in the Kingdom.

The National Address is one of the products of the Saudi Post (SPL) that has been implemented locally and adopted internationally in the Universal Postal Union. It is the exclusive address for each residential or commercial unit, built on a digital electronic basis linked to geographical coordinates. This makes the Saudi National Address available on smart maps and recognized on global maps. This allows postal customers to track their mail shipments to the correct addresses on the internet, through their personal computers, and on their smartphones.

The National Address covers all parts of the Kingdom and has been adopted by the Council of Ministers by activating the addresses of residence and work in the Civil Status Law, the Commercial Register Law, and the Residence Regulations. By the end of 2022, the number of registrants in the National Address has risen to more than twenty million subscribers, with 7.6 million addresses. It covers 100 percent of the buildings in the Kingdom and has seen more than three hundred million verification operations of the National Address (APIs).

The National Address consists of: the building number, which is four unique numbers representing a residential or commercial building; the name of the street where the main entrance of the building is located; the subsidiary number, which is four numbers representing the exact coordinates of the building location; the name of the neighborhood in which the building is located; the postal code, which consists of five numbers, with each number having a unique geographical significance; and the city where the National Address is located.

The National Address facilitates the delivery of government and commercial services to a residence with an official address recognized for everyone, simplifying location description and making it easy to pinpoint individuals in case of emergency or ambulance services. Its objectives include establishing the necessary infrastructure for the standardized national addressing system and setting up a modern communication system on which e-government services and e-commerce applications are based. It also aims to provide fast and reliable postal services to all segments of society, including citizens, residents, government departments, and private entities. Additionally, the system ensures reaching any address within the borders of the Kingdom in the shortest possible time, at the lowest cost, and with the highest degree of technology and accuracy.

It's the transformation of the traditional long National Address into a simple address that is easy to remember and store, consisting of only four letters and four numbers. The short address covers all regions of the Kingdom with an accuracy ranging between one to two m, and it qualifies the beneficiary to obtain ten addresses worldwide through the Global service. Using the short address speeds up the delivery of shipments without the need for additional calls, facilitates the receipt of government documents, and allows for the easy acquisition of both commercial and personal parcels, without the hassle of personally picking them up.

The Kingdom ranks first in Asia in the application of modern international addressing standards, having obtained the International Address Standard certification from the Universal Postal Union. This makes it the seventeenth country globally and the first Asian country to apply the latest international standards.

Registering the National Address can be done in less than three minutes via the official online service or through the offices affiliated with Saudi Post.