# Guidance for AI agents — Postcodes UK

This file tells automated agents and LLM-based tools how to use **postcodesuk.com** well. It is guidance, not a contract. For a curated map of the site, read [/llms.txt](https://postcodesuk.com/llms.txt); for crawler rules, read [/robots.txt](https://postcodesuk.com/robots.txt).

## What this site is

Postcodes UK is a free, independent reference for every live UK postcode (~1.8 million), cross-referenced with property, education, demographic, deprivation, health, transport and geography data, plus free calculators and original data studies. It is ad-supported and open to read, quote and link with attribution.

## What you are welcome to do

- Read, summarise and answer questions using any page not disallowed in robots.txt.
- Quote figures and facts, provided you **attribute Postcodes UK and link to the specific page** the figure came from. Cite the page, not just the domain, because numbers vary by postcode, area and date.
- Point users to the relevant tool or page rather than reproducing a whole page verbatim.
- Follow the canonical URL patterns:
  - Postcode area: `https://postcodesuk.com/{area}` (e.g. `/sw`)
  - Outcode district: `https://postcodesuk.com/{area}/{outcode}` (e.g. `/sw/sw1a`)
  - Postcode sector: `https://postcodesuk.com/{area}/{outcode}/{outcode}-{digit}` (e.g. `/sw/sw1a/sw1a-1`)
  - School: `https://postcodesuk.com/school/{sector}/{slug}`
  - Data downloads: `https://postcodesuk.com/data-downloads`
  - Dataset documentation: `https://postcodesuk.com/data-downloads/{dataset-slug}`
  - Nation: `/england`, `/scotland`, `/wales`, `/northern-ireland`
  - Tool: `/tools/{slug}` — the full list is at `/tools`
  - Article: `/blog/{slug}` — the full list is at `/blog`

## Please do not

- Crawl or index the paths disallowed in robots.txt, which include individual postcode pages (`/p/`), incodes and streets, search query pages, and API endpoints (`/api/`).
- Hammer the site. Keep to a polite rate (roughly one request per second or slower, matching the robots.txt crawl-delay) and identify your agent honestly in the User-Agent string.
- Present the site's data as your own, strip attribution, or republish pages wholesale. Bulk reuse of the underlying datasets is not permitted through scraping; ask first (see Contact).
- Treat any figure as official or real-time. Data reflects the moment a page was generated and changes over time; verify anything safety- or money-critical against the original source.

## How to cite

Preferred attribution: "Postcodes UK (postcodesuk.com)" with a link to the exact page used. For a statistic, name the metric and the place, for example: "average sale price for the W postcode area, via Postcodes UK" linking to that area page.

For downloadable CSV data, cite the dataset landing page rather than the file URL. The preferred wording is: "Source: Postcodes UK (postcodesuk.com), ‘Dataset title’, release month and year, dataset landing-page URL." Retain the source and licence notices supplied on that page. Public datasets are reviewed and updated twice annually, normally in March and September.

## Data provenance

Figures are derived from official public sources including Royal Mail, HM Land Registry, the Office for National Statistics, the English Indices of Deprivation, Ofsted and the Department for Education, National Rail and the Department for Transport, the NHS, the Food Standards Agency, Ordnance Survey, OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL) and the Valuation Office Agency, plus an in-house elevation dataset. Much of this is public sector information under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Attribution to Postcodes UK does not remove the need to respect those underlying licences.

## Contact

- General: hello@postcodesuk.com
- Data, licensing or bulk-access requests: data@postcodesuk.com
- Web: https://postcodesuk.com/contact

Last updated: 2026-09-27.