What Are Plus Codes? Open Location Codes Without a Street Address
Plus Codes turn coordinates into short codes you can share by text. Where they help, where they don’t, and how to encode or decode them.
Plus Codes turn coordinates into short codes you can share by text. Where they help, where they don’t, and how to encode or decode them.
- Good for: deliveries to unnamed plots, meeting points, asset tags
- Not for: proving ownership, replacing tax-parcel IDs, or ignoring local addressing laws
- Precision follows code length — do not demand door-level meaning from a short code
Street addresses fail in the countryside, in new developments, and in cities where informal paths never got official names. Plus Codes (Open Location Codes) were designed as a workaround: a short string that encodes a grid cell on the Earth’s surface so anyone with a compatible map can find the same place. They are not a replacement for legal title or postal systems; they are a practical locator.
How a Plus Code behaves
A full global code stands alone. A shortened code is cheaper to say aloud but needs a surrounding city or region to disambiguate. Longer codes mean smaller cells — higher precision. Encoding is deterministic: the same coordinates yield the same code. That makes them useful in SMS, paper notes, and field teams that do not share a single proprietary map account.
- Good for: deliveries to unnamed plots, meeting points, asset tags
- Not for: proving ownership, replacing tax-parcel IDs, or ignoring local addressing laws
- Precision follows code length — do not demand door-level meaning from a short code
Plus Codes vs latitude/longitude
Coordinates are the underlying truth on WGS84. Plus Codes are a compact language for those coordinates. If a system accepts decimal degrees, you can always convert. If a person refuses to read negative numbers and decimal points over the phone, a code can be easier. Keep both when accuracy matters.
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About the author
Aryan Khan edits MapBench with a focus on practical map calculations, coordinate systems, routing concepts, open geographic data and clear limitations. Guides are written to help a reader make a better decision, not just to repeat a definition.
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