IP Lookup
Detect your public IP address, ISP, and approximate geolocation in real time.
ActiveInstantly detect your public IPv4 and IPv6 address, ISP, location, and network details — no registration, no downloads required.
Unable to retrieve your IP information. Please check your connection and try again.
Data from ipapi.co
Understanding exactly what happens when you visit this page
Your browser loads this page and initiates a secure HTTPS request to the IP detection API.
The external API at ipapi.co receives your connection and reads the originating public IP address assigned by your ISP.
The API matches your IP against a geolocation database to estimate your approximate city, region, and country.
Your browser receives the JSON response and renders your network information on this page — no data is stored on our servers.
Privacy note: This page makes a request to the third-party API at ipapi.co, which necessarily receives your IP address as part of the HTTP request in order to identify and return it. We do not collect, log, or retain your IP address on this website. Please review the for full details.
Location coordinates unavailable — map cannot be displayed.
A growing suite of free tools to help you understand and diagnose your network
Detect your public IP address, ISP, and approximate geolocation in real time.
ActiveMeasure your internet connection download and upload speed and latency.
Coming SoonQuery DNS records for any domain including A, AAAA, MX, TXT, CNAME, and NS records.
Coming SoonCheck whether your email address has appeared in known data breaches and credential leaks.
Coming SoonEverything you need to know about IP addresses, networking, and online privacy
An IP address (Internet Protocol address) is a unique numerical label assigned to every device that participates in a computer network using the Internet Protocol for communication. Just as every house on a street has a postal address so that mail can be delivered correctly, every networked device has an IP address so that data packets can be routed to and from the right destination.
When you browse a website, send an email, or stream a video, your device sends data packets across the internet. Each packet carries both a source IP address and a destination IP address. Routers and network equipment use these addresses to forward each packet along the most efficient path toward its destination.
A public IP address is a globally unique IP address assigned by your Internet Service Provider (ISP) that identifies your network on the open internet. When you visit a website, that website's server sees your public IP address as the source of the request. Public IP addresses are routable across the entire internet, meaning any device anywhere in the world can send data directly to a public IP address provided there are no firewalls blocking the traffic.
Your public IP address is what this tool detects and displays. It is associated with your ISP account and, in most residential configurations, is shared across all devices on your home network through a technology called Network Address Translation (NAT).
A private IP address is an IP address used within a local network such as your home Wi-Fi or office network. Private addresses are not routable on the public internet — they exist only within your local network. The most common private IP address ranges, defined by RFC 1918, are:
If you check your device's network settings, you will typically find a private IP address such as 192.168.1.100. This is your local address, invisible to external websites.
IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4) uses a 32-bit address space, which provides approximately 4.3 billion unique addresses. While this seemed an enormous number when the internet was young, the explosive growth of connected devices has exhausted the available IPv4 pool. IPv4 addresses are written as four decimal numbers separated by dots, for example: 192.0.2.1.
IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) was developed to solve the address exhaustion problem. IPv6 uses a 128-bit address space, providing approximately 340 undecillion unique addresses — enough for every atom on Earth to have trillions of IP addresses. IPv6 addresses are written as eight groups of four hexadecimal digits separated by colons, for example: 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334. Leading zeros can be omitted and consecutive groups of zeros can be replaced with ::, making the address more readable.
IPv6 also brings improvements beyond just more addresses, including simpler header structure for faster routing, built-in IPsec security support, and more efficient multicast and anycast addressing. Many ISPs now assign both an IPv4 and an IPv6 address to residential customers in a dual-stack configuration.
Because IPv4 addresses are scarce, most home and business networks use NAT (Network Address Translation). Your router holds one public IP address assigned by your ISP, while all devices on your internal network use private IP addresses. When any of your devices makes a request to the internet, your router rewrites the source address of the outgoing packet from the device's private IP to the router's public IP. When the response arrives, the router translates the destination address back and forwards the packet to the correct internal device.
NAT effectively allows many devices to share a single public IP address, significantly reducing the demand on the depleted IPv4 address pool. A side effect of NAT is that it provides a modest degree of privacy, since external websites see your router's public IP rather than the private IP of any individual device.
Most residential ISP customers are assigned a dynamic IP address, which can change each time you reconnect, restart your router, or after a lease period expires. ISPs use dynamic addressing because it allows them to efficiently reuse their IP address pool.
A static IP address remains constant indefinitely. Businesses often require static IPs for hosting servers, running VoIP systems, or connecting remote offices. Static IPs are typically available as a paid add-on from ISPs and provide reliability for services that must always be reachable at the same address.
Every HTTP and HTTPS request your browser sends includes your public IP address in the connection metadata at the network layer. There is no way to visit a website without the web server knowing the IP address that initiated the request — this is fundamental to how the internet's routing system works. Websites log these IP addresses for purposes such as security, fraud detection, analytics, and troubleshooting.
IP geolocation maps an IP address to an approximate geographic location based on databases maintained by organisations such as MaxMind and IP2Location. These databases are populated using registration data submitted to Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) and active measurement techniques.
IP geolocation is inherently approximate. It can typically identify the country and sometimes the city with reasonable accuracy for residential IPs, but it is frequently wrong at the neighbourhood or street level. ISPs may route traffic through data centres in a different city than the customer's physical location. VPN and proxy traffic will show the IP location of the exit node, not the user. Mobile carrier IPs often appear in the location of the carrier's gateway, not the handset.
The interactive map on this page shows an approximate location based on IP geolocation data. It should never be interpreted as the precise physical address of any person or device.
A VPN (Virtual Private Network) encrypts your internet traffic and routes it through a server operated by the VPN provider. Websites and services you visit see the VPN server's IP address instead of your own. This is useful for masking your real IP from websites and advertisers, bypassing geographic content restrictions, securing your connection on untrusted public Wi-Fi networks, and accessing corporate networks remotely.
However, a VPN is not a complete anonymity solution. The VPN provider can see your traffic unless they implement a verified no-logs policy, and metadata such as connection timing can still be analysed. A poorly configured VPN can suffer DNS leaks, WebRTC leaks, or IPv6 leaks that expose your real IP address even while connected.
A proxy server operates similarly to a VPN at the application layer but typically without the encryption tunnel. HTTP and HTTPS proxies forward your browser requests through a different IP, but they do not encrypt all traffic at the operating system level. Transparent proxies may even forward your real IP in request headers.
The DNS (Domain Name System) translates human-readable domain names such as example.com into IP addresses such as 93.184.216.34. When you type a URL in your browser, it first queries a DNS resolver to look up the IP address of the destination server. DNS queries can reveal significant information about your browsing activity. Using a privacy-focused DNS resolver and enabling encrypted DNS (DNS over HTTPS or DNS over TLS) can reduce this data exposure.
A firewall is a network security system that monitors and controls incoming and outgoing network traffic based on pre-defined rules. Firewalls can operate at the hardware level (your router's built-in firewall), at the software level (Windows Defender Firewall, iptables on Linux), or in the cloud. Modern routers implement Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI), which tracks the state of active connections and only allows inbound packets that correspond to an established outbound session, effectively blocking unsolicited inbound connections from the internet.
Protecting your privacy online requires a layered approach. Use a reputable VPN service with a verified no-logs policy. Enable encrypted DNS (DNS over HTTPS) in your browser or operating system. Use a privacy-focused browser and disable third-party cookies. Keep your router firmware updated to patch security vulnerabilities. Use unique, strong passwords and enable two-factor authentication on all accounts. Be cautious about the information you share online — metadata can identify you even without your IP address.
Honest, accurate answers to the most common questions about IP addresses
Your IP address is a unique numerical label assigned to your internet connection by your Internet Service Provider (ISP). Your current public IP address is shown at the top of this page in real time. It is the address that websites, servers, and online services see when you connect to them. If you are behind a home router, all devices on your network share this single public IP address through a technology called NAT (Network Address Translation).
No. IP geolocation can typically identify the country and sometimes the approximate city or region associated with your ISP's IP address allocation, but it cannot determine your street address, home, or precise physical location. The accuracy varies considerably — for residential connections it may be off by dozens or even hundreds of kilometres. The map displayed on this page is clearly labelled as approximate and should never be interpreted as representing your exact physical address.
IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4) uses 32-bit addresses and provides about 4.3 billion unique addresses, written in dotted-decimal notation like 192.0.2.1. The global IPv4 address pool has been exhausted. IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses, providing 340 undecillion addresses — enough for the foreseeable future. IPv6 addresses look like 2001:db8::1. Many ISPs now support dual-stack connections, assigning both an IPv4 and an IPv6 address simultaneously.
If your ISP assigns a dynamic IP address, which is typical for residential accounts, you may be able to obtain a new IP by restarting your router and waiting for a new DHCP lease, though there is no guarantee you will receive a different address. A more reliable method is to connect through a VPN, which replaces your visible IP with the VPN server's IP. If your ISP assigns a static IP, you cannot change it without contacting your ISP. Changing your IP does not make you anonymous, as websites can identify you through cookies, browser fingerprinting, and account logins.
It depends on your ISP and your connection type. If you have a dynamic IP address, restarting your router causes it to request a new IP lease from your ISP's DHCP server. Many ISPs renew the same IP address because it is still available in their pool. Some ISPs, especially cable providers, assign IPs based on the hardware identifier (MAC address) of your modem, making it very unlikely to change. Leaving your router off for an extended period may increase the chance of receiving a different IP when it reconnects.
Yes, absolutely. Every time your browser connects to a web server, your public IP address is transmitted as part of the TCP/IP connection. The server must know where to send the response. This is a fundamental and unavoidable part of how the internet works. Web servers routinely log IP addresses for security, analytics, and debugging purposes. The only way to prevent a website from seeing your real IP is to route your traffic through a VPN, Tor, or another proxy service.
Yes. When you connect through a VPN, your browser's requests are encrypted and forwarded through the VPN server. Websites and online services see the VPN server's IP address as the source of the connection, not your real public IP. However, a VPN does not provide complete anonymity: the VPN provider can see your traffic, your ISP can see that you are connected to a VPN, and browser fingerprinting or cookies can still identify you across sessions regardless of your IP address. Always choose a VPN provider with a verified no-logs policy and independent audits.
In many legal jurisdictions, yes. Under the European Union's GDPR, IP addresses are generally considered personal data because they can be used to identify a natural person, particularly when combined with ISP subscriber records. In practice, most websites cannot de-anonymise an IP address without the cooperation of the ISP. Organisations subject to GDPR, CCPA, and similar regulations must have a lawful basis for processing IP addresses and must disclose this in their privacy policies.
NAT (Network Address Translation) is a technique used by routers to allow multiple devices on a private network to share a single public IP address. Your home router maintains a translation table that maps each internal device's private IP and port to the router's public IP and a different port number. When a response arrives from the internet, the router consults this table to forward the packet to the correct internal device. NAT has extended the usable life of IPv4 by decades, but it also complicates direct peer-to-peer connections, hosting servers from home, and certain VoIP and gaming applications that require inbound connections.
IPv6 deployment depends on your ISP enabling and provisioning it for your account, and on your router and operating system supporting it. Many ISPs, particularly in regions with significant legacy infrastructure, have been slow to roll out IPv6 to residential customers. If your ISP does not provide IPv6, you will not have a public IPv6 address regardless of whether your devices support it. As ISPs continue IPv6 deployment globally, dual-stack connectivity is becoming increasingly common.
For most residential users, the risk is low but not zero. Your home router acts as a NAT firewall and blocks unsolicited inbound connections, making it very difficult to directly attack devices behind it using only an IP address. However, a determined attacker could attempt to exploit vulnerabilities in your router's firmware or in any services you have intentionally exposed to the internet. The most realistic IP-based attack against ordinary users is a DDoS flood that overwhelms your connection with traffic, temporarily disrupting your internet access. Keeping your router firmware updated and disabling unused port forwarding rules are the most effective defences.