Classify an address as residential or commercial
Heuristicaddresses_type_classifyBest-effort — fuzzy, approximate, or inferred; check the confidence score.
Classify an address by delivery type. Returns boolean flags: po_box, military_apo / fpo / dpo, rural_route, highway_contract, general_delivery, residential_hint, commercial_hint. Plus derived is_military and is_non_street_delivery. Matters for shipping: commercial carriers (UPS/FedEx) cannot deliver to APO/FPO/DPO. Processing multiple inputs? Use `addresses_type_classify_batch` to do up to 1000 in one call.
Parameters
addressstringrequiredCall it
curl -X POST https://api.snipget.ai/v1/addresses/type-classify \
-H "Authorization: Bearer sk_live_..." \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"address":"350 Fifth Ave, Suite 200"}'The Batch tab sends up to 1000 inputs in one call via /v1/addresses/type-classify/batch.
Example response
{
"input": "350 Fifth Ave, Suite 200",
"is_valid": true,
"po_box": false,
"military_apo": false,
"military_fpo": false,
"military_dpo": false,
"rural_route": false,
"highway_contract": false,
"general_delivery": false,
"commercial_hint": true,
"residential_hint": false,
"is_military": false,
"is_non_street_delivery": false,
"labels": [
"commercial_hint"
]
}FAQ
What is this useful for?
It flags the kind of address you are dealing with: a PO box, a military address (APO/FPO/DPO), a rural route, general delivery, or a hint that it is commercial versus residential. This matters for shipping, because commercial carriers like UPS and FedEx cannot deliver to APO/FPO/DPO addresses, those must go through USPS.
Can it definitively tell me if an address is a home or a business?
No, and this is the honest limit. The residential and commercial flags are hints based on keywords like "Apt", "Unit", "Suite", or "Floor", not a lookup against a property database. Treat them as a best guess, not the final word.
How reliable are the results, and what is the matchType?
It is heuristic, meaning best-effort pattern matching on the text you give it. The delivery-type flags (PO box, military, rural route) are quite reliable because those follow fixed formats, but the residential/commercial hint is softer, so check the confidence score, which is lower when no clear signal is found.
Can more than one flag be true at once?
Yes. The result returns every category as its own true/false flag, plus a "labels" list of just the ones that matched, and two roll-up booleans, is_military and is_non_street_delivery, for quick filtering.
What happens with an empty or invalid address?
You get a normal response with is_valid set to false, a confidence of 0, and a why_invalid reason, not an error. So an empty string is handled gracefully rather than crashing your workflow.