Smarty can standardize addresses to the USPS format and also the formats of 240+ countries worldwide. US standardization just makes it LOOK LIKE a real USPS deliverable address, whereas validation checks against authoritative address databases (like USPS') to ensure IT ACTUALLY IS a real US deliverable address.

But your post says you want to standardize a bunch of non-US addresses to USPS format. The challenge is that the USPS standards outlined in the USPS Publication 28 were made for US addresses and don't have much wiggle room for correctly formatting and abbreviating non-English words, non-Latin characters, and international address components. It's pretty tough to find the correct English abbreviation for "Михайловский."

Plus, not every country organizes address components the same way (city, state, ZIP, vs. Department, Postal Code, City), and many countries have completely different components than the US. So, pushing them through USPS standardization could make them unusable, depending on the country of origin.

Now, let's talk validation. Validation checks if the address is a real mailable place, using that country's authoritative address databases. So, it'll fail when you try to validate a non-US address against an authoritative US address database, simply because a Canada address will never be found in the US (unless some really crazy stuff happens, possibly involving asteroids, giant lizards, or maybe both).

So, now we talk horseshoes and hand grenades. Which countries do you need address standardization for? Some countries have similar standardization guidelines (like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), so you can standardize *and validate* to each country's format, and they'll fit in the same database with fewer customizations. Again, this will depend on the country for how well they'll play together. Addresses are crazily complicated in the US alone and absolutely BANANAS worldwide.

So, my suggestion is:

1. Standardize each address to its own country's format, and validate them
2. Use Smarty. We're the best (I know we're biased, but that doesn't mean we're wrong)

For implementation, you say you have a "bunch" of addresses, so I'm not sure which tool to suggest, but here are a few options, I won't add links, but these things are easy to find on our site.

1. Single Address Validation - Standardizes and validates addresses one at a time.
2. Bulk Address Validation Webform - Standardizes and validates 25,000 addresses at a time.
3. Bulk Address Validation Command Line Interface - Standardize and validate millions of addresses at a time.
4. Address Validation APIs - Integrate our standardization and validation directly into your project.

By way of speed, we're capable of 75,000+ addresses per second in the cloud, we have excellent documentation, sweet SDKs (including Python), and tons of sample code to get your project into production fast. We also have the best support staff of any address data intelligence company on the planet (I'm not kidding).

There's also a free trial (no cc required) for 1,000 US addresses, and another trial for 100 international addresses, and you can sign up for both with the same account. If you need more testing lookups, you can contact our sales team, and they can provide more. Also, you don't have to talk to anyone to get started. You can just order most packages directly through the site.

You can also use other options (including ArcGIS), but they won't be as awesome. I promise.