ZIP Code Map Maker

How to plot ZIP codes on a map

The ZIP Code Map Maker turns a plain list of ZIP codes into a map in a few seconds. You do not need a GIS program, an account or a spreadsheet add-in. Everything runs in your browser, and your list is never sent to a server.

1. Paste your ZIP codes into the box, one per line. To color the map by a number, put the value after the ZIP, separated by a comma or a tab, for example 60614,77.
2. Or click Upload CSV and pick a file exported from Excel, Google Sheets, a CRM or an e-commerce platform. The tool finds the ZIP column by its header (ZIP, Zip Code, Postal Code, ZCTA) and uses the first numeric column as the value.
3. Click Plot ZIP codes. Each ZIP is matched to its Census ZIP Code Tabulation Area and drawn as a dot at that area's center point, and the map zooms to fit all of them.
4. Pick a color scheme, the number of classes (3, 4 or 5) and how the class breaks are chosen. The legend on the map updates as you change them.
5. Check the Not found list, then download the map as a PNG or the matched data as a CSV that opens cleanly in Excel.

If you only have a handful of ZIP codes (up to 50), you can also click Show ZIP boundaries to fill each ZIP's actual outline with its class color. That draws a true choropleth instead of dots.

How to format your ZIP code list

The parser is forgiving, so most lists work as they are. These formats are all accepted:

• One ZIP per line: 10001, 10013, 11201. Each ZIP gets a value equal to the number of times it appears.
• A single line of ZIPs separated by commas or spaces, such as a list copied from an email.
• ZIP and value pairs separated by a comma, tab or semicolon. Currency signs, thousands separators and percent signs are stripped, so $125,000 reads as 125000.
• A CSV or TSV with a header row and any number of extra columns. Columns other than the ZIP and the first mostly-numeric column are ignored.
• ZIP+4 codes such as 02134-1520. Only the first five digits are used.

Excel often strips the leading zero from New England, New Jersey and Puerto Rico ZIP codes, turning 02134 into 2134. The tool pads any three- or four-digit number back to five digits, so these still match. When the same ZIP appears on several rows, you choose whether the map shows the sum, the mean or the maximum of its values.

What you can map by ZIP code

ZIP codes are the most common location field in business data. Almost every order system, CRM, donor database and survey tool stores one, even when it stores nothing else about place. That makes a ZIP code map the quickest way to see where your numbers come from.

• Customers or members: where your buyers, patients, students or subscribers live.
• Sales and revenue: totals or averages by ZIP to compare territories or spot gaps.
• Leads and inquiries: which areas respond to a campaign or a mailer.
• Service coverage: the ZIPs a franchise, installer or delivery service covers. Pair it with the ZIP codes in a radius tool to build the list from a distance.
• Events and incidents: complaints, claims, repairs or any count that comes with a ZIP.
• Locations: stores, offices or partners when all you have is the ZIP code. For street-level pins from full addresses, use plot multiple addresses on a map.

A ZIP code heat map works best when the value means something comparable from ZIP to ZIP. Raw counts are fine for a first look, but bigger ZIPs naturally have more of everything. To compare fairly, divide your count by population first. The CSV export includes each ZIP's population (American Community Survey 2020-2024 5-year estimate) so you can calculate a rate per 1,000 residents in a spreadsheet and paste the result back in.

How the colors and legend are chosen

Every matched ZIP is placed in one of up to five classes, and each class gets a color from light (low) to dark (high). There are two ways to set the class breaks:

• Quantile (the default) puts roughly the same number of ZIPs in each class. With five classes, each color covers about a fifth of your ZIPs. This is the best choice for skewed data such as sales, where a few ZIPs are much larger than the rest, because the map still shows variation among the ordinary ZIPs.
• Equal interval splits the range from the lowest to the highest value into equal steps. A value of 80 is always in a higher class than 40. Use it when the numbers themselves matter more than the ranking, but expect most ZIPs to land in the lightest class if your data has one or two very large values.

The legend shows the range of each class and how many ZIPs fall into it. When size dots by value is on, dot area also grows with the value, which helps when dots overlap in dense cities. Turn it off for a cleaner look when you only care about color. If every ZIP has the same value, the map uses one class and one color.

Examples of ZIP code maps

The three sample buttons above the tool load ready-made lists: customers around Chicago, a store list with no values, and sales across Texas. The table below shows common setups and how to read the result.

A worked example: a bakery exports 1,200 online orders, one row per order with the delivery ZIP and the order total. Pasting the export and choosing sum shows where revenue comes from. Switching to mean answers a different question, namely which neighborhoods place the largest orders. Switching off values entirely (paste just the ZIP column) shows order counts. Same data, three maps, no spreadsheet pivot table.

Dots or ZIP code boundaries: which to use

Dots are the default because they are fast and work for any list size, from five ZIPs to thousands. Every dot sits on the Census internal point of its ZIP Code Tabulation Area, a point chosen to fall inside the area, near its middle. Dots are easy to read at a national or state scale, where outlines of small urban ZIPs would be too tiny to see anyway.

Boundaries are better at a city or county scale, where the shape and size of each ZIP matters. They are loaded on demand from the Census Bureau's TIGERweb service, one ZIP at a time, so the option is limited to 50 ZIPs to keep it quick and polite to that public service. If a boundary cannot be loaded, that ZIP simply stays a dot. To look at a single ZIP's outline in detail, use the ZIP code boundary map.

Keep in mind that large rural ZIPs dominate a boundary map visually even when they hold few people, while dense city ZIPs almost disappear. If your audience might read area as importance, dots are often the more honest choice.

How accurate is a ZIP code map?

The values on the map are exactly what you paste in; the tool does not change or round them. What is approximate is the geography. USPS ZIP codes are mail delivery routes, not areas, and the Postal Service does not publish boundaries. The Census Bureau builds ZIP Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs) from census blocks to approximate them, and that is what this tool uses: the 2020 ZCTAs, with center points from the Census 2024 Gazetteer file.

Most residential ZIPs have a matching ZCTA. ZIPs that serve only PO boxes, a single large organization (some universities, government agencies and big companies have their own), or that were created after 2020 have no ZCTA. They appear in the Not found list rather than being placed at a guessed location. The county and state shown for each ZIP are those of the county that holds the largest part of the ZCTA's land, from the Census 2020 ZCTA-to-county relationship file, so a ZIP that crosses a county line is credited to one county only.