How to compare Australian address APIs
Nearly every Australian address provider reads the same national dataset, so coverage is rarely what separates them. What separates them is where your customers’ keystrokes are processed, what counts as one billable event, and whether the thing you actually need is an address that exists or an address Australia Post will deliver to.
Answer this first, because it decides the category
Do you need to know an address is real, or that mail will arrive at it? Those are two different products and no amount of feature comparison bridges them. Addresses that exist come from G-NAF, the open national address file. Deliverability comes from Australia Post’s PAF, through an AMAS-certified provider. WattleAddr is firmly the first kind, and we say so on the home page rather than in the fine print.
What actually differs, by category of provider
Categories rather than brand names, deliberately. Every provider’s pricing and feature list moves, and a table on our site carrying a stale number about someone else is worse than no table. These are structural differences that hold regardless of who is currently cheapest this quarter.
| Criterion | Global platform autocomplete | AU postal / mail-house | WattleAddr |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where a lookup is processed Autocomplete sends raw keystrokes before anyone presses submit. | Globally distributed; usually not Australian-resident | Typically Australian | Sydney only, Australian backup, no offshore edge |
| Underlying dataset Decides what can and cannot be matched at all. | Proprietary global index incl. businesses and landmarks | Australia Post PAF (delivery points) | G-NAF, refreshed quarterly, release named in every response |
| Billing unit The single biggest driver of the bill on a busy form. | Per session, but only if the session completes; abandoned ones revert to per-request | Usually per record or an annual licence | Per completed session, always — abandoned searches are free |
| Currency and tax Determines who carries FX and whether you can claim the GST. | Commonly USD, GST treatment varies | AUD | AUD, GST included; the 10% is itemised on a compliant tax invoice |
| PO Boxes A predictable share of any Australian address form. | Not as validated postal addresses | Yes — this is what PAF is for | No — explicit notice returned instead of an empty list, and not billed |
| Mail deliverability (AMAS/PAF, DPID, barcodes) Required for bulk-mail lodgement discounts. | No | Yes, when AMAS-certified | No — out of scope by design |
| International addresses Matters the moment you sell outside Australia. | Yes, worldwide | No | No — Australia only |
| Residency attestation, DPA, SLA, PO billing What procurement and security review actually ask for. | Enterprise agreements, often offshore-governed | Varies | DPA + residency attestation published, every account; SLA and PO billing on Enterprise and Government |
Billing structure for the global-platform column is taken from Google’s own published session-pricing documentation, which states that an autocomplete session reverts to per-request billing when it is not terminated by a details call. Check the current rates with the provider — we quote nobody’s prices but our own.
Why the billing unit matters more than the rate
A person typing “1 martin place sydney” fires a request on roughly every keystroke after the third. Whether those requests are one billable event or a dozen is the difference the rate card cannot show you.
The abandoned-search trap
Session pricing that only applies when the session completes means every customer who starts typing and gives up is billed per keystroke instead. On a checkout with real abandonment, that is not a rounding error. A WattleAddr session that never reaches a retrieve costs nothing.
What we actually charge
$0 for 5,000 lookups a month, ongoing and without a card. $53.90/month for 50,000, $163.90/month for 250,000 — $0.66 per 1,000 at the Growth tier. Overage is $2.75 and $1.65 per 1,000, with no forced upgrade. AUD, GST included ($49 and $149 ex-GST).
Currency and GST
A USD rate card moves with the exchange rate and lands on your statement as a foreign transaction. We invoice in Australian dollars, add 10% GST exactly once, and itemise it on a tax invoice carrying our ABN — which is what your bookkeeper needs to claim the credit.
The migration cost is small
Address autocomplete touches one field. It is a script tag, an npm package or three REST calls, and the OpenAPI spec is public so you can generate a client before you talk to us. Read the Google Places migration guide.
Where WattleAddr is the wrong choice
If any of these describe you, buy something else. We would rather say so here than have you find out after a migration.
- You post mail in bulk and want lodgement discounts. That needs Australia Post AMAS certification against PAF. We have no certification and issue no DPIDs or barcodes, by design. G-NAF cannot get you there either — AMAS certifies against Australia Post’s PAF, a separately licensed dataset — so the fix is a PAF-licensed product, not a different G-NAF one.
- You need PO Boxes validated. No G-NAF provider can do this — G-NAF contains no PO Boxes, GPO Boxes, Locked Bags or Private Bags at all. You need a PAF-licensed one. What we do instead of failing silently: we detect the query before the engine runs and return an explicit
postal_address_unsupportednotice, and we do not bill for it. - You have customers outside Australia. We return Australian addresses only. A global provider, or a second provider alongside us, is the right answer.
- You need reverse geocoding or a bulk-cleansing endpoint today. The API is four endpoints — autocomplete, retrieve, verify and status. There is no coordinates-to-address call and no batch upload. Both are wanted; neither is shipped, and we are not going to imply otherwise.
- You want businesses, landmarks or points of interest. G-NAF holds physical addresses. If you need “Sydney Opera House” to resolve, you want a places index, not an address file.
Where WattleAddr is the right choice
- Australian data residency, attestable. Every lookup is served from Sydney with an Australian backup, no foreign CDN and no offshore edge — and there is a published data-residency attestation to hand to procurement.
- Per-session billing, not per-keystroke. One lookup per completed address search however many characters were typed, and nothing at all for a search the customer abandons — and the 5,000-lookup free tier is ongoing, not a trial.
- Procurement-ready paperwork. The DPA and the data-residency attestation are published and apply to every account, not negotiated per deal; an SLA with service credits and purchase-order billing are available on Enterprise and Government. For government, health, finance, or anyone who reads the sub-processor list.
- Parsed fields with a per-field verdict. The address comes back split into components you can store, and
verifyadds a status per field, so a checkout can re-prompt for the one field that disagreed instead of the whole address. - Australian support, in your timezone. You talk to the people who run it.
Questions buyers ask
What is the best address autocomplete API for Australian addresses?
There is no single best one, because the honest answer depends on one question: do you need to know an address exists, or do you need to know Australia Post will deliver to it? For web forms, checkouts and sign-ups, a G-NAF-based API such as WattleAddr is the right category — it is the authoritative national address file, refreshed quarterly, and every serious Australian provider builds on it. For bulk mail lodgement you need an Australia Post AMAS/PAF-certified provider instead, which WattleAddr is not and does not claim to be. Within the G-NAF category the differences that actually matter are where the lookup is processed, whether you are billed per keystroke or per completed address, and whether you can get a data-residency attestation, DPA and purchase-order billing.
What is the cheapest Australian address validation API?
Compare the billing unit before the sticker price, because that is where the order-of-magnitude difference is. Address autocomplete fires a request on every keystroke, so a provider that bills per request charges roughly eight to twelve times per address found compared with one that bills per completed search session. WattleAddr bills one lookup per session regardless of how many characters were typed, bills nothing at all for a search someone abandons, and starts at $0 for 5,000 lookups a month with no card. Paid plans are $53.90/month for 50,000 lookups and $163.90/month for 250,000, in Australian dollars including GST ($49 and $149 ex-GST) — $0.66 per 1,000 lookups at the Growth tier.
Is there an Australian alternative to Google Places Autocomplete?
Yes. WattleAddr is an Australian-owned address autocomplete and validation API served entirely from Australian infrastructure, built on the open G-NAF dataset. The practical differences are that no end-user keystroke leaves Australia, billing is in Australian dollars with GST itemised on a compliant tax invoice, and one address search is one billable lookup whether or not the customer completes it. The trade-off is coverage: WattleAddr returns Australian addresses only, and does not return businesses, landmarks or points of interest.
Does an Australian address API need to be hosted in Australia?
Not by law in most cases, but it is frequently a contractual requirement. Australian Privacy Principle 8 makes you accountable for what an overseas recipient does with personal information you disclose to them, and government and regulated buyers commonly require onshore processing outright. The practical trap is that address autocomplete sends your end-users’ raw keystrokes to the provider before anyone has clicked submit, so an offshore autocomplete quietly makes a data-residency promise you have already given a customer or an auditor untrue. WattleAddr serves every request from Sydney with an Australian backup, with no foreign CDN or offshore edge in the request path, and publishes a data-residency attestation for procurement.
Can any Australian address API validate a PO Box?
Not from G-NAF. The Geocoded National Address File is a register of physical addresses and contains no PO Boxes, GPO Boxes, Locked Bags or Private Bags, so no G-NAF-based provider can match one — that includes WattleAddr. PO Boxes live in Australia Post’s Postal Address File (PAF), so a provider licensed for PAF can validate them. WattleAddr detects these queries and returns an explicit postal_address_unsupported notice rather than an empty dropdown, and does not bill for them, so your form can offer a separate postal-address field.
When is WattleAddr the right choice?
When you need to know an Australian address exists, is correctly formatted and where it is — and you need that answered onshore. Five cases: you have told a customer, an auditor or a tender that Australian data stays in Australia, and autocomplete transmits raw keystrokes before anyone presses submit; you sell to government, health or finance and need a DPA and a data-residency attestation you can download today, with an SLA and purchase-order billing available on Enterprise and Government; your form is busy enough that per-keystroke billing hurts, since WattleAddr bills one lookup per completed address search and nothing for an abandoned one, on an ongoing 5,000-lookup free tier rather than a trial; you want the address parsed into storable fields, with verify adding a status per field so a checkout can re-prompt for the single field that disagreed; or you want to talk to the people who run it, in your timezone.
What is G-NAF and do all Australian address providers use it?
G-NAF is the Geocoded National Address File, the authoritative index of physical Australian addresses maintained by Geoscape Australia and published as open data. It is refreshed quarterly and contains roughly 17 million addresses with coordinates. Essentially every Australia-specific address API is built on it, which is why coverage rarely differs much between them — the differences are in matching quality, hosting, billing model and contractual terms. Because the dataset is open, its licence requires a short attribution to Geoscape Australia wherever you surface the data.
Try it before you compare anything else
The free tier is ongoing, not a trial. Five thousand lookups a month, no card, same data and same infrastructure as the paid plans.