Migrating from AddressFinder to a G-NAF API: what changes

5 Sept 2026 · 5 min read

This is a practical companion to the comparison page, which says where AddressFinder is the better fit in its own words. This post assumes you have decided to move an Australian address field and want to know what breaks.

Decide the boundary first

Two things do not survive the move, going by what AddressFinder’s site said on 2 September 2026, and if you need either, stop here. WattleAddr covers Australian physical addresses only, so a form that also takes New Zealand addresses needs a second provider for those. And WattleAddr is built on G-NAF alone, so there is no Australia Post PAF, no DPID and no PO Box validation; a PO Box query returns an explicit notice, not a match. If your mailroom depends on DPIDs, read AMAS and PAF vs G-NAF before touching any code.

What changes in the code

• The widget or client. Replace your existing integration with the one-tag widget or the npm packages; both handle the session token that makes a whole search bill as one lookup.
• The field names. The record comes back as `formatted` plus `components` (`flat_number`, `level_number`, `street_number`, `street_name`, `street_type`, `locality`, `state`, `postcode`) and `geo`. Map your columns once; `street_type` is the full word (Street, not St) and `locality` is the suburb.
• Verification. Free text you already hold goes to `verify`, which returns a `verdict` and a per-field status; branch on the verdict, not on a score.
• Billing. One completed search is one lookup, an abandoned search is free, prices are in Australian dollars with GST included, and you are invoiced rather than charged automatically. Work your monthly completed searches off the pricing page.

A migration in an afternoon

• Create a free workspace and a publishable key locked to your domain.
• Swap the widget on a staging copy of the form and compare the returned components with what your database expects.
• Run your existing address table through verify in a batch of one hundred and read the verdicts; ambiguous rows are the ones a human should look at.
• Store the G-NAF release named in each response with the address, so a future re-verification can be reproduced.
• Switch the live key, keep the old provider active for a week, and compare the abandonment rate on the form.

Addressfinder is a trade mark of its owner; WattleAddr is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to it. Nothing here is a claim about how AddressFinder behaves today; check their documentation for their side of each item. The newbie quickstart walks the WattleAddr side from sign-up to the first charged call in five minutes.