Philippines Mailing Address Format
About
Explore
Services arrow_drop_down Send Money Free Send Load Free Ask a Question
Send Money Free
Send Load Free
Ask a Question
Philippines Gifts
Blog
Expat Life
Feb 26
Share post
When coming from a foreign understanding, figuring out how to correctly format Philippine addresses can be confusing. Although much of the Philippine government was modeled after the U.S., you will soon find that comparing the two is almost like comparing apples to oranges. In order to get a better grasp on the Philippines mailing address format, we though we would compare it in layman’s terms against the United States standard address format. Before we do that however, lets examine the Philippine equivalents of common U.S. administrative divisions:
U.S.A Philippines States ————————————————————————————————- Provinces Counties & Districts ———————————————————— Administrative Regions Cities & Townships ———————————————————————– Cities & Villages Neighborhoods ———————————————————————————– Barangays Blocks ———————————————————————————————– Sitio/Purok Complex & Cul-de-sac ———————————————————————— Compounds Streets —————————————————————————————————- Streets Street # ——————————————————- Street #, Compound, or Building Name Apartment/Unit # ———————————————————————– Apartment/Unit #
Don’t understand what your looking at? Never heard of administrate regions, barangays, or sitios before? Your not alone! Think of the Philippines Administrative regions as districts or counties that are large enough to be states, but do not serve the purpose that state governments do, instead they are mainly for the distribution of government funds and programs. Provinces on the other hand, are more like States in that provincial Governors hold much of the same power as States in the United States do. Cities, they essentially act the same as they do in the U.S. with Mayors and all that jazz 🙂 The main difference being, that do to both a higher general population, and a population that is harder to locate and manage, cities are further divided into an ancient system of government here what are called “Barangays.” Barangays, being the smallest administrative division in the Philippines, also have their own elected officials that serve these divisions exclusively. A “sitio” or “purok” is simply a further subdivision of a barangay that is often outside the barangay center, they do not serve any function other than organization and distribution.
What you’ll often find here in the Philippines are a multitude of various mysterious buildings, compounds, and lots that comprise much of the first line of the typical Philippines mailing address format. This is because the vast majority of citizens in this country do not live on an actual street as defined by western terminology, or they do not belong to an actual official development. Another thing you’ll notice is that the Philippines doesn’t normally utilize an address line 2 for apartment numbers, instead this is usually added at the beginning of address line 1. In fact, much of how the address’s are formatted here may be backwards from what you are used to. For this reason, it’s common that the first time one mails a package to the Philippines, they might worry if the package will ACTUALLY arrive at the correct destination! To avoid any confusion I’ve gone ahead and listed a detailed example of both the universal U.S. mailing address format, and the universal Philippines mailing address format, side-by-side for your convenience.
The standard U.S. mailing address format is normally as follows: Name or Company Street # & street name or “PO Box” & PO Box # Unit # (if applicable) City/Municipality then State abbreviation, zip code Country (if mailing internationally)
Example Herman Munster 123 Mockingbird Lane Unit #1 Mockingbird Heights City, CA 90001
Comparatively, the standard Philippines mailing address format is normally as follows:
Name or Company Unit # (if applicable) then Building/apartment name or compound name (if applicable), Lot/Block # (if applicable) Street# & street name (if applicable) then if not directly on the street write “Interior” or “PO Box” & PO Box # then Post Office Name Sitio (if applicable), Barangay City/Municipality, Province, Zip Code Country (if mailing internationally)
Example Samuel Miguel Unit #A Sunshine Condos, MC-99 123 Muddy Street Interior Nawanao, Subangdaku Mandaue City, Cebu 6014 Philippines
Tracking packages here in the Philippines can be a little different…please see this post on how that works.
Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Copyright 2016-2019 © Salamat Philippines™. All rights reserved.
Philippine Red Cross
Peace Corps
Legal
Contact
Or connect with
Your personal data will be used to support your experience throughout this website, to manage access to your account, and for other purposes described in our privacy policy .
Telegram
Tumblr
VKontakte
Copy link
To help us increase the accuracy of our listings, especially in cases where there may not be a known street number, after you enter the address, please manually add the exact coordinates by checking google maps. Salamat!