ICD-10-CM Code Lookup
Look up any ICD-10-CM diagnosis code and see at once whether it can go on a claim. The set includes thousands of category headers that are real codes but are not valid for submission — every result says which it is, and shows the codes underneath.
By code (E11.65), by category (E11), or by a word in the description (anemia).
74,719 codes you can put on a claim, and 23,467 headers you cannot.
What this answers, and what it does not
Every ICD-10-CM entry in the FY 2026 release — 74,719 codes valid for a HIPAA-covered transaction, plus 23,467 headers that are real ICD-10-CM entries but cannot go on a claim. Every result says which it is.
It searches codes and their descriptions. It is not the Alphabetic Index, so it will not turn a clinical abbreviation or a lay term into a code the way a coder’s index does — a hundred of the most common abbreviations are carried, and everything past that is a job for the Index.
CPT is not here. Those are procedure codes, they are copyrighted by the American Medical Association, and their descriptions are not ours to publish. ICD-10-CM is diagnoses only.
A header is a real code that still denies
The FY 2026 release holds 98,186 entries, and 23,467 of them cannot go on a claim. They are not typos or retired codes — they are category headings such as E11, which means Type 2 diabetes mellitus and is a perfectly real part of the classification. It simply is not specific enough to submit; the codes beneath it are.
CMS marks the difference in the code file itself, in a single column that says whether an entry is valid for a HIPAA-covered transaction. That column is the whole reason this tool exists. Every result here shows it, and a header offers the valid codes underneath it in one click — because the answer a biller needs is never “that is invalid”, it is “use this instead”.
Where an unspecific diagnosis survives the clearinghouse and denies at the payer instead, that arrives as a medical necessity denial, and which diagnosis was pointed at which service line is its own source of trouble — diagnosis pointer linkage covers that. If a claim carrying one of these codes came back denied, the denial code decoder turns the reason code on the remittance into the next action.
What this searches, and what the Alphabetic Index searches
ICD-10-CM has two halves. The Tabular List is the classification itself — the codes and their official descriptions, which is what this tool holds. The Alphabetic Index is the other half: the lookup a coder uses to get from a diagnosis in a chart to a candidate code, organized by lead term with modifiers under it.
The distinction is practical, not academic. COPD appears in no ICD-10-CM description at all — the wording is “chronic obstructive pulmonary disease” — and the same is true of CHF, DVT and ESRD. A tool that searches descriptions will find none of them, and this one says so rather than implying no such code exists. Around a hundred abbreviations that the official Index resolves on their own are carried here so that GERD and AIDS land somewhere useful.
For everything else, NCHS publishes the Index free in its ICD-10-CM Browser Tool, which searches both halves and every fiscal year. That is the right tool for turning a condition into a code, and this page does not pretend to replace it.
A code set is only correct as of a date of service
This tool serves the FY 2026 set, which applies to encounters from 2025-10-01 to 2026-09-30. ICD-10-CM changes every October 1 and may change again on April 1, so a claim for an earlier encounter needs the set that was in force then — and a code that is missing here may simply belong to a different year. The page states which release it is showing rather than implying it is always current, and the NCHS browser above is where other years live.
For what ICD-10 is and how it differs from the procedure code sets, the glossary entry defines it, and medical billing vs. coding lays the code sets out side by side. Procedure codes are a separate question: the HCPCS Level II lookup covers supplies, drugs and equipment.
Source, licensing, and how the search works
Every code and description comes from icd10cm_order_2026.txt, inside the FY 2026 code descriptions file published on the CMS ICD-10 page, downloaded 2026-08-07. Its SHA-256 begins 6dc95c9c7e96c734, recorded so a later rebuild can prove it read the same bytes. The abbreviations come from the Alphabetic Index in the same release’s tabular and index file.
ICD-10-CM is maintained by the National Center for Health Statistics and distributed by HHS, and the descriptions are reproduced unedited. That is a licensing position, not an assumption: the regulation adopting the HIPAA code sets names ICD-10-CM “as maintained and distributed by HHS” in the same breath as it names CPT and the dental code set as the property of the AMA and the ADA. Nothing in this tool is CPT, and the build refuses to emit a five-digit numeric code.
The codes are static files on this site, fetched by your browser only once you start typing, and the search runs entirely in this tab. Nothing you type is sent anywhere, logged, or written to this page’s address — there is no server to send it to. Typing a chapter letter or a two-character stem is answered from data already in the page, with no request at all.
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