The full upstream README, mirrored here for reference. Install config, tool schemas, adoption signals, and an original overview live on the GBG Loqate Reach listing page.
Verify addresses, emails, and phone numbers against Loqate's APIs.
Get confidence scores, policy-aware recommendations, and full auditability — in one command.
Real-time verification decisioning for agents that need to know whether contact data is good enough for the job.
Part of GBG Reach.
lqt verify · lqt parse · lqt mcp
lqt_windows_amd64.zip from the latest releaselqt.exePATH, or run it directlySee Releases for all versions and platforms. Each release includes SHA-256 checksums.
| Platform | Archive |
|---|---|
| macOS (Apple Silicon) | lqt_*_darwin_arm64.tar.gz |
| macOS (Intel) | lqt_*_darwin_amd64.tar.gz |
| Linux (x86_64) | lqt_*_linux_amd64.tar.gz |
| Linux (ARM64) | lqt_*_linux_arm64.tar.gz |
| Windows (x86_64) | lqt_*_windows_amd64.zip |
You need a Loqate API key for verification. Optionally, an Anthropic API key for the parse command.
macOS / Linux:
Windows (PowerShell):
macOS / Linux:
Windows (PowerShell):
Verify addresses, emails, and/or phone numbers against Loqate's APIs. Returns a confidence score and a policy-driven recommendation (accept, review, or reject).
Flags:
| Flag | Short | Description |
|---|---|---|
--address | -a | Full address to verify |
--locality | City/town | |
--admin-area | State/province | |
--postcode | Postal/ZIP code | |
--country | -c | ISO 2-letter country code |
--detect-country | When no country is supplied, guess it from the address and flag the guess in the result. Address-only; off by default. | |
--suggest | When the address does not clear the policy (review or reject), look up alternative addresses suggested by Loqate and return them under address.suggestions. Not called for an accepted address. Requires a separately licensed Loqate feature enabled on your account. Address-only; off by default; not available with --batch. | |
--suggest-limit | Maximum suggestions to return, 1–10 (default 5). Requires --suggest. | |
--suggest-below | Confidence floor for suggestions: an accepted address scoring below it still gets suggestions. Defaults to the active policy's value (standard 0.85). 0 disables the floor. Requires --suggest. | |
--suggestion-id | Verify a suggestion the user chose, by its id from address.suggestions. Resolves the id to its cleansed components and verifies those. Use instead of --address. Consumes a Loqate credit. Not available with --batch or --dry-run. | |
--email | -e | Email address to verify |
--phone | -p | Phone number (E.164 format) |
--key | -k | Loqate API key (overrides env) |
--policy | Policy name: strict, shipping, standard, permissive | |
--policy-file | Path to custom policy JSON file | |
--batch | -b | CSV/TSV/pipe-delimited file path (or - for stdin) |
--delimiter | -d | Batch delimiter: comma, tab, pipe (auto-detected if omitted) |
--output | -o | Output format: json, jsonl, table |
--summary | -s | Show batch summary statistics |
--field | Extra Loqate input field Key=Value (repeatable) | |
--option | Loqate API option Key=Value (repeatable, dot notation for nesting) | |
--jsonl | JSON Lines output (one object per line) | |
--no-color | Disable color output | |
--verify-url | Custom address verification endpoint URL (overrides LOQATE_VERIFY_URL env var) | |
--verify-key | Custom address verification API key (overrides LOQATE_VERIFY_KEY env var). When set, --key is not required for address-only verification. | |
--verbose | -v | Show reasoning log |
Examples:
Full list of input fields and API options: Loqate International Batch Cleanse API
--suggest)Licensing. Suggestions use a Loqate feature that is licensed separately from address verification and must be enabled on your account. If it isn't, nothing breaks: the verification still returns its normal result and exit code, and the reason appears in
suggestions.error(typically an unknown-key or licence message from Loqate). Talk to your Loqate account contact to have it enabled.
Verification tells you an address is wrong. Suggestions tell you what the right one probably
is. Add --suggest and lqt asks Loqate for real addresses matching what was typed, returning
them with the decision.
The lookup runs when either:
review or reject), orstandard — see the Policies table).The second case is the one that catches near-misses. A policy accepts anything at or above its
minimum confidence, so accepted is not the same as confident: on standard the input
marsh wall, E14 9TN matches a street and scores exactly 0.55, which is accepted — yet the
house number is missing and better addresses exist. Use --suggest-below to move that line
(--suggest-below 0 turns the confidence check off and only suggests on review/reject).
Things worth knowing:
suggestions block is still returned with "triggered": false and a reason, so
you can tell "no alternatives needed" from "suggestions were never requested".floor reports the threshold that was applied, so you can see why a lookup ran (or
didn't) without knowing the policy's configuration.suggestions.error and the verification result stands.verify --email / --phone, or verify_contact, only the address
block is decorated."expandable": true is a street, postcode, or building holding several
addresses rather than one deliverable address. Search within it for a specific premise.--key / LOQATE_API_KEY); --verify-key alone
covers address verification only.--batch. A large file would fan out into an unbounded number of
lookups, so the combination is rejected. Verify the file, then re-run the flagged rows
individually with --suggest.Available on the MCP verify_address / verify_contact tools and the REST
/v1/verify/address / /v1/verify/contact endpoints as suggest: true, with optional
suggest_limit (1–10, default 5) and suggest_below (0–1).
A suggestion is a candidate, not a verdict. Items carry no confidence score, no match level, and no AVC — they are what the reference data thinks the address might have been. Don't write one into your system of record on faith. Close the loop in three steps:
--suggest. A non-empty suggestions.items means alternatives exist.items[].address to whoever can decide — the customer in a checkout or support
flow, the agent in an automated one. That field is the ready-to-display line.id (--suggestion-id). That result — its confidence,
match level, and standardized fields — is the one you keep. Full flow below.Over REST it's the same shape — one call with suggest, then a plain call with the choice:
--suggest — get candidates for an address that didn't come back clean.items[].address to whoever decides.--suggestion-id, using the chosen item's id. That result is the one you keep.Passing the id rather than the text is what makes step 3 accurate: lqt fetches that
address's cleansed components (company, sub-building, number, street, city, postcode, country)
and verifies those, so nothing is re-parsed. It matters for suggestions carrying a company name
— London Lash, 56 Marsh Wall, London — where re-reading the text can misplace the company as
part of the street.
The result records what it resolved from, so you can audit it without resolving again:
Over REST, the same two steps:
What to know:
suggestion_id replaces address; sending both is a 400.--batch, and not with --dry-run (resolving needs a live billable call).SUGGESTION_NOT_FOUND / 404. Ids change over time — search again rather
than retrying the same id.Just want the address, not a decision? Resolve it on its own:
GET /v1/address/{id} over REST, or the retrieve_address MCP tool. This returns reference
data, not a verification — no confidence, no recommendation — so don't treat it as checked.
Four rules that keep the loop safe:
suggest on the confirmation call. If the chosen address still doesn't clear the
policy you'd get a fresh set of suggestions, and an automated flow could bounce between them.
One round of suggestions, then a plain verify.review or reject, the record still needs a human. You've narrowed it, not fixed it.expandable item as-is. It's a street, postcode, or building, so
verifying it lands at street level at best. Use it to ask for the missing piece ("which
number on Marsh Wall?") and verify the completed address.id. It's a Loqate-assigned identifier that changes over time. Key off the
verified address returned in step 3.Keep the country from the original request on the confirmation call — dropping it can change the match.
lqt returns suggestions in the order Loqate provides them — no re-ranking or filtering is
applied. Loqate matches across the whole address record, including organisation names, so a
query like marsh wall london ranks businesses with "London" in their name above plain
residential addresses on that street:
That's standard address-autocomplete behaviour, but it means suggestion quality tracks input
quality. Where you know the country, pass it as --country rather than leaving it in the
address text — that moves the token out of the fuzzy match and into a filter:
Parse and standardize contact data using Claude (Haiku). Extracts address components, validates email syntax, and normalizes phone numbers with awareness of 250+ country-specific postal formats. No Loqate API calls — no credits spent.
Flags:
| Flag | Short | Description |
|---|---|---|
--address | -a | Full address to parse |
--email | -e | Email address to validate |
--phone | -p | Phone number to normalize |
--country | -c | ISO 2-letter country code hint |
--batch | -b | CSV/TSV/pipe-delimited file path (or - for stdin) |
--delimiter | -d | Batch delimiter: comma, tab, pipe (auto-detected if omitted) |
--output | -o | Output format: json, jsonl, table |
--jsonl | JSON Lines output | |
--no-color | Disable color output | |
--anthropic-key | Anthropic API key (overrides env) |
Examples:
List, inspect, and validate verification policies.
Start an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server. Exposes LQT as tools for AI agents.
Flags:
| Flag | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
--http | Listen address (e.g. :8080, 127.0.0.1:8080) | |
--rate-limit | 10 | Max requests/sec per IP (0 to disable) |
--rate-burst | 20 | Max burst size for rate limiter |
--smoke-test | Self-test the MCP server (checks tools and prompts register) and exit | |
--disable-custom-endpoint | Block per-request custom verify endpoint fields | |
--rest | Also serve the REST API at /v1 (HTTP mode only) |
For clients that don't speak MCP, the HTTP server can also expose a plain REST API — opt-in with --rest, mounted at /v1 on the same port. Same result data as the CLI and MCP.
Authentication: your Loqate API key as a bearer token — Authorization: Bearer <LOQATE_API_KEY> (or key in the request body).
| Method | Path | Description |
|---|---|---|
POST | /v1/verify/address | Verify an address (supports detect_country, suggest, suggestion_id) |
POST | /v1/verify/email | Verify an email |
POST | /v1/verify/phone | Verify a phone number |
POST | /v1/verify/contact | Verify any combination + overall recommendation (supports detect_country, suggest) |
GET | /v1/address/{id} | Resolve a suggestion id to a cleansed address (consumes a credit) |
GET | /v1/policies | List decisioning policies |
GET | /v1/policies/{name} | Show one policy |
GET | /v1/openapi.json | OpenAPI 3.1 specification |
GET | /v1/docs | Interactive API reference |
A recommendation (accept / review / reject) is always returned as HTTP 200 with the decision in the body. Errors use standard status codes: 400 invalid input, 401 missing/invalid key, 429 rate limited, 502 upstream error.
Full request/response schemas are documented in the OpenAPI spec at /v1/openapi.json (browse it at /v1/docs).
Every address verification also returns detail that explains the score without changing it:
| Field | What it tells you |
|---|---|
matchscore | 0-100, how closely the returned address resembles what you sent. Surfaced so you need not parse it out of avc. |
coverage_level + coverage_level_label | The country's maximum Loqate verification level, as a number and a name: 5 delivery_point, 4 premise, 3 street, 2 locality. The label uses the same vocabulary as match_level, so when the two are equal the address matched as precisely as that country's data allows. |
coverage_boost | The level shift applied because that country's data tops out below premise. This is the number that explains why a street-level match in a low-coverage country still scores highly. |
changes | What Loqate altered, in words. Opt-in — see below. |
To get changes, ask Loqate for its per-field status codes:
Nothing was wrong with that address; three things were added (ZIP+4, county, country name) and the postcode was reformatted. Fields Loqate verified without touching are not listed, so a short list means a clean address.
change is one of added, corrected, reformatted or unrecognised. code is Loqate's original
status code, kept so the categorisation is not lossy — the codes are Loqate's own, documented at
docs.loqate.com/report-codes/fieldstatus.
Absent changes means you did not ask for the codes. An empty array means you asked and nothing changed.
The option also adds a <field>_status key per component to fields, since that passthrough returns
everything Loqate sends.
This detail appears on every address verification — single, batch (per row), MCP and REST — because all four go through the same result builder.
Policies control what gets accepted, reviewed, or rejected. Every verification runs through a policy — there are no hardcoded thresholds.
| Policy | Addr Confidence | Match Level | Email Confidence | Phone Required | Suggest Below | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| strict | 0.90 | premise | 0.85 | yes | 0.90 | KYC, fraud prevention, regulated |
| shipping | 0.85 | street | 0.50 | no | 0.85 | Physical delivery, ecommerce |
| standard | 0.55 | street | 0.45 | no | 0.85 | General verification (default) |
| permissive | 0.30 | locality | 0.30 | no | 0.70 | Lead capture, early funnel |
Suggest Below is not an acceptance threshold — it never changes accept/review/reject. It is
the confidence below which --suggest looks up alternatives even for an accepted address.
See Address suggestions. Custom policies can set their own
value, and the recommend_policy MCP tool proposes one for the use case you describe.
Create a JSON file:
Process files with address, email, and phone columns. Supports comma, tab, and pipe delimited input.
Windows (PowerShell):
Auto-detected from the first line. Override explicitly with --delimiter:
| Value | Aliases | Description |
|---|---|---|
comma | csv | Comma-separated (default) |
tab | tsv | Tab-separated |
pipe | Pipe-separated |
Use a single address column or structured fields — or both. All column names are case-insensitive. Every field from the Loqate International Batch Cleanse API is supported.
Address lines:
| Field | Accepted column names |
|---|---|
| Address (line 1) | address, address1, street, address_line_1 |
| Address lines 2-8 | address2-address8, address_line_2-address_line_8 |
| Delivery address | deliveryaddress, delivery_address |
| Delivery lines 1-8 | deliveryaddress1-deliveryaddress8, delivery_address_1-delivery_address_8 |
Geography:
| Field | Accepted column names |
|---|---|
| City | city, locality, town |
| State/Province | state, admin_area, province, region, administrative_area |
| County | county, sub_admin_area, sub_administrative_area |
| Postal code | postcode, postal_code, zip, zipcode |
| Country | country, country_code |
Street / building / premise:
| Field | Accepted column names |
|---|---|
| Street name | thoroughfare, street_name |
| Building | building, building_name |
| House number | premise, house_number, building_number |
| Apartment/Suite | sub_building, apartment, suite, unit, flat |
Organization / postal:
| Field | Accepted column names |
|---|---|
| Organization | organization, organisation, company, company_name |
| PO Box | post_box, postbox, po_box, pobox |
Contact / person:
| Field | Accepted column names |
|---|---|
| First name | forename, first_name |
| Last name | surname, last_name |
| Full name | full_name, name |
Non-address fields:
| Field | Accepted column names |
|---|---|
email, email_address | |
| Phone | phone, telephone, phone_number, mobile |
The lqt mcp command exposes LQT as tools for AI agents via the Model Context Protocol. Connecting the MCP server also provides a built-in usage guide prompt that teaches the AI how to use the tools effectively.
Add to your project's .mcp.json:
Add to Claude Desktop's MCP settings:
The fastest way to use Loqate over MCP is the GBG-hosted endpoint — no install, no infrastructure. Point any MCP client at:
Claude Code / Cursor / any MCP client — .mcp.json:
Restart your client, then ask it to "verify 125 Summer St, Boston, MA 02110, US". It will discover the tools, call them, and explain the result.
Authenticate with your Loqate API key — pick one:
key in the tool arguments ({"key": "YOUR-KEY", "address": "..."}).Authorization: Bearer <YOUR-LOQATE-KEY> on the HTTP connection. Applies to every tool call.<loqate_api_key>YOUR-KEY</loqate_api_key> in org / project / user instructions; the model injects it as key automatically.If you supply none of the three, the server returns a NO_API_KEY error. The Bearer header only supplies the standard Loqate key; verify_key for a custom address-verify endpoint is separate.
Sanity check from your terminal (no client needed):
Hosted deployments disable custom verify endpoints for security. If you receive a CUSTOM_ENDPOINT_DISABLED error, remove verify_url and verify_key from your tool arguments.
Prefer plain REST? The same hosted service also exposes the REST API — no MCP client required. Authenticate with your Loqate API key as a bearer token.
The OpenAPI spec (/v1/openapi.json) and reference page (/v1/docs) are unauthenticated, so you can explore the full API before you have a key.
If you'd rather run the server yourself, deploy lqt mcp --http as a service:
Same three-tier key resolution applies (body key → Authorization: Bearer → server env LOQATE_API_KEY).
10 tools in stdio mode, 7 in HTTP mode (tools marked stdio mode only are not available over HTTP).
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
verify_address | Verify an address with confidence score and recommendation (supports detect_country, suggest, suggestion_id) |
verify_email | Verify an email with risk level and recommendation |
verify_phone | Verify a phone number with type/carrier and recommendation |
verify_contact | Verify all fields together with overall recommendation (supports detect_country, suggest, suggestion_id) |
retrieve_address | Resolve a suggestion id to a cleansed address (consumes a credit; not a verification) |
parse_address | Parse and standardize an address via Claude (stdio mode only) |
list_policies | List available decisioning policies |
show_policy | Show details for a specific policy |
set_policy | Register a custom policy (stdio mode only) |
recommend_policy | Get a recommended policy for your use case, including its suggestion confidence floor (stdio mode only) |
Designed for scripting and CI/CD:
| Code | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 0 | ACCEPT — all fields passed verification |
| 1 | REVIEW — manual review recommended |
| 2 | REJECT — verification failed |
| 3 | ERROR — missing key, invalid input, API failure |
macOS / Linux:
Windows (PowerShell):
verify)macOS / Linux:
Windows (PowerShell):
parse)macOS / Linux:
Windows (PowerShell):
Resolution order: flag > environment variable > key file
If you need to route address verification through a different endpoint (e.g., an on-premises or partner-hosted Loqate instance):
macOS / Linux:
Windows (PowerShell):
Resolution order: flag > environment variable > default Loqate endpoint
When --verify-key is set, the standard --key / LOQATE_API_KEY is not required for address-only verification. If you also verify email (-e) or phone (-p), the standard key is still needed for those.
These flags only affect address verification. Email and phone always use the standard Loqate endpoints.
In MCP mode, clients can pass verify_url and verify_key per-request in verify_address and verify_contact tool inputs.
When reporting a bug, please include:
lqt version (lqt --version)Proprietary — see LICENSE. Use requires an active Loqate subscription.
Built by GBG.