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What Is My IP Address Network Intelligence
Real-time IP detection

What Is My IP Address?

See the public IP address that websites and online services see when you connect. This tool detects your IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, your internet provider, your approximate location and your timezone — instantly and without registration.

View My IP Details Read the IP Guide
Checking your public network information…

Your Public IP Dashboard

Live network information detected from your current connection. Everything shown here is retrieved in your browser — nothing is stored on this website.

Connection Information

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Public IP Address
000.000.000.000
Detecting… —
Public IPv4
000.000.000.000
Public IPv6
0000:0000::0000
Internet Service Provider
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Organization / ASN
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City
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Region
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Country
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Country Code
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Timezone
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Approximate Coordinates
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Coordinates are approximate and describe the network, not a street address.

Network information is provided by third-party public IP geolocation APIs (ipwho.is, with ipapi.co and ipify.org as fallbacks). Your browser contacts these services directly over HTTPS.

Approximate Location on Map

The marker shows roughly where your connection appears to originate according to IP geolocation databases.

Map unavailable No coordinates were returned for this connection, so no marker can be placed.
This is approximate, IP-based geolocation only. It is not your exact physical address, and no street-level address is ever shown. Mobile networks, VPNs and corporate proxies can appear hundreds of kilometres away.

How This Tool Works

A transparent look at exactly what happens when you open this page.

Your browser loads a static page

This website is a single static HTML page. It has no backend, no database and no server-side logging of your IP address.

Your browser contacts a public IP API

Your browser sends an HTTPS request directly to a public IP information service. Because your browser makes that request, the service necessarily sees your public IP address.

The API returns network data

The service responds with your public IP, its protocol version, your ISP, and an approximate geographic location derived from routing databases.

Your browser renders the result

The data is displayed on this page and placed on the map. It exists only in your browser tab and disappears when you close or reload the page.

Complementary Network Tools

Related utilities for working with IP addresses and networks. Features that are not implemented yet are clearly labelled.

IP Lookup Live

Look up any public IPv4 or IPv6 address and see its provider and approximate location.

Leave empty to look up your own public IP address.

Speed Test Coming Soon

Measure download speed, upload speed and latency to a nearby test server. This feature is planned but not yet available.

DNS Checker Coming Soon

Resolve a domain across multiple public resolvers and compare the answers. This feature is planned but not yet available.

Data Breach Scanner Coming Soon

Check whether an email address appears in known public data breaches. This feature is planned but not yet available.

The Complete Guide to IP Addresses, Routing and Online Privacy

An IP address is one of the least understood pieces of everyday technology. It appears in error messages, in privacy policies, in security warnings and in advertising settings, yet most people are never told what it actually does. This guide explains IP addressing from the ground up, in plain language, and separates the genuine privacy risks from the myths.

What an IP address actually is

Every device that communicates over the internet needs an address so that data can find its way back and forth. That address is the Internet Protocol address, usually shortened to IP address. Think of it as the return address on an envelope: when your browser requests a web page, the server needs to know where to send the response. An IP address is a numeric label assigned to a network interface, and it operates at the network layer of the TCP/IP model — below the application protocols such as HTTP that most people interact with directly.

An IP address does two jobs at once. It identifies a device or a network connection, and it provides the routing information that lets packets travel across interconnected networks. Crucially, it identifies a connection point, not a person. The same laptop can have one address at home, another at a café, and a third when connected through a mobile network.

Public IP addresses

A public IP address — sometimes called a global or routable address — is one that is unique across the entire internet and can be reached from anywhere, subject to firewalls and routing policies. Your internet service provider assigns or lends you a public address, and every server you contact sees that address as the source of your requests. Public addresses must be globally unique: the regional internet registries allocate blocks of them to ISPs and organisations, and those blocks are advertised through the Border Gateway Protocol so that routers everywhere know which direction to send traffic.

Private IP addresses

Private addresses are a reserved range that is never routed on the public internet. RFC 1918 defines three blocks: 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12 and 192.168.0.0/16. Your home router hands out addresses from one of these ranges to your phone, laptop, television and printer. Because these addresses are not globally unique, millions of households can use 192.168.1.10 at the same time without conflict. When a private address needs to reach the internet, the router translates it — a process called Network Address Translation. This is why the address your router shows you locally (often something like 192.168.1.1) is different from the public address this page detects.

Quick check: if an address starts with 10., 192.168. or falls between 172.16. and 172.31., it is a private address and cannot be the address that websites see. It is also not the address displayed at the top of this page.

IPv4: the original protocol

IPv4 has been the backbone of the internet since 1983. It uses 32-bit addresses written as four decimal octets, for example 203.0.113.42. That gives a theoretical maximum of about 4.3 billion addresses — a number that seemed enormous in the 1980s and is now far too small for the tens of billions of connected devices in use today. The last major blocks were allocated to regional registries in 2011, and since then ISPs have relied heavily on NAT and address recycling to keep everyone connected.

IPv6: the long-term solution

IPv6 was designed to solve the exhaustion problem. It uses 128-bit addresses written in hexadecimal and separated by colons, for example 2001:db8:85a3::8a2e:370:7334. The address space is so large that it is effectively impossible to exhaust. IPv6 also simplifies some routing behaviour, removes the need for NAT in most cases, and supports automatic configuration that lets devices build their own addresses. Adoption has grown steadily, but many networks still run IPv4 only, or run both in a "dual stack" configuration. If this page shows an IPv6 address for you, your ISP and device both support it. If it does not, your connection is probably IPv4-only — that is a limitation of the network, not of your device.

How routing works

Routers do not know where every device on the internet lives. Instead they know routes: "to reach this range of addresses, send the packet that way." A packet leaving your home passes through your ISP's access network, then through a series of backbone routers, each forwarding it one hop closer to its destination. BGP is the protocol that lets these routers exchange reachability information. The practical consequence for you is that the path your traffic takes can change from minute to minute, and the geographic path is often not the shortest one on a map.

Dynamic versus static addresses

Most residential connections use dynamic addressing. Your ISP leases you an address for a period, and when the lease expires — often after a router reboot or a period of disconnection — you may receive a different one. Business connections frequently use static addresses so that servers, VPN endpoints and mail systems remain reachable at a predictable location. Dynamic addresses are not inherently more private; they simply change more often.

What websites can see

When you load a page, the web server receives your public IP address as part of the connection, along with your browser's user agent string, the pages you request and the times of those requests. It does not automatically receive your name, your street address or your files. Websites combine the IP address with other signals — cookies, login sessions, browser fingerprinting — to build a picture of a visitor, which is why an IP address is best understood as one piece of a larger identification puzzle rather than a name tag.

IP geolocation and its limits

IP geolocation databases map address ranges to approximate locations. They are built from registry records, network topology measurements and commercial data. Accuracy varies enormously: a country-level guess is usually right, and a city-level guess is often right, but it can also point to the ISP's regional hub rather than your neighbourhood. Mobile networks and VPNs are frequently misplaced by hundreds of kilometres. Treat the map on this page as "roughly where this connection appears to come from" and never as a street address. No exact address is shown here because no exact address is available from an IP lookup.

VPNs and proxy servers

A VPN creates an encrypted tunnel between your device and a server operated by the VPN provider. Your ISP sees only encrypted traffic to that server, and websites see the VPN server's IP address instead of yours. A proxy does something similar but usually without encryption and often only for a single application. Both change what websites see; neither makes you anonymous. The VPN provider can still see your traffic, accounts you log into still identify you, and browser fingerprinting still works.

Firewalls, security and realistic threats

A firewall filters traffic according to rules — allowing your browser's responses, blocking unsolicited inbound connections. Consumer routers include a basic firewall, which is a large part of why a home network with private addressing is not trivially reachable from outside. Knowing someone's IP address alone does not let an attacker read their files or take over their computer. Realistic risks include targeted denial-of-service traffic, port scanning against exposed services, and social engineering in which an attacker uses location hints to make a scam more convincing. Keeping software updated, disabling unnecessary remote access and using strong unique passwords address far more risk than hiding an IP address.

DNS: turning names into addresses

The Domain Name System translates human-readable names into IP addresses. When you type a domain, your device asks a resolver — usually provided by your ISP or a public service — for the corresponding address. DNS queries are normally unencrypted unless you use DNS-over-HTTPS or DNS-over-TLS, which means the resolver can see which names you look up even though it does not see the content of your traffic. DNS is often described as the internet's phone book; it is more accurately a distributed, heavily cached database.

Does changing your IP address improve privacy?

Changing your public IP address can help in specific, limited ways: it can defeat a simple IP-based block, prevent a website from linking two visits, and reduce the accuracy of coarse location guesses. It does not hide you from the sites you log into, it does not stop browser fingerprinting, and it does not make you anonymous. For most people, the meaningful privacy improvements come from using HTTPS everywhere, blocking third-party tracking, reviewing account permissions, and being careful about what they share — not from cycling IP addresses.

Common misconceptions

  • "My IP address is my home address." It is not. It is a routing label, and geolocation based on it is approximate.
  • "Everyone has a unique IP address." With NAT, thousands of devices can share a single public address.
  • "A VPN makes me invisible." A VPN shifts who can observe what, but it does not eliminate identification.
  • "IPv6 is optional and never used." IPv6 carries a large and growing share of global traffic.
  • "Hiding my IP stops hackers." Most attacks target software flaws and people, not addresses.

Frequently Asked Questions

Straight answers to the questions people ask most often about IP addresses.

What is my IP address?

Your IP address is the numeric label your internet connection uses so that data can be routed to and from your device. The address shown at the top of this page is your public IP address — the one external servers see. It is usually the address of your router or your ISP's gateway, not a private address such as 192.168.x.x.

Can my IP address reveal my exact location?

No. IP geolocation is approximate by nature. Databases map address ranges to regions, so results are usually reliable at country level and often at city level, but they can be wrong by many kilometres — especially on mobile networks, corporate networks and VPNs. An IP lookup never returns a street address.

What is the difference between IPv4 and IPv6?

IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses such as 203.0.113.42, giving roughly 4.3 billion possible addresses — far too few for today's internet. IPv6 uses 128-bit hexadecimal addresses such as 2001:db8::7334, providing an effectively inexhaustible address space. Many networks run both protocols simultaneously, which is called dual stack.

Can I change my public IP address?

You can change it in some circumstances. Restarting your router may return a different dynamic address if your ISP uses short lease times. Connecting through a VPN or proxy changes the address that websites see. You can also ask your ISP for a new or static address, though this is usually not free.

Does restarting my router change my IP address?

Sometimes. If your ISP assigns addresses dynamically and your lease expires while you are disconnected, you will usually receive a different address. If you have a static address, or your lease is still valid, the address stays the same.

Can websites see my IP address?

Yes. Any server you connect to receives your public IP address as part of the connection, because it needs that address to send the response back. It does not automatically receive your name, your files or your exact address, but combined with cookies and browser fingerprinting it can help identify a returning visitor.

Does a VPN hide my IP address?

A VPN replaces your public IP address with the address of the VPN server and encrypts traffic between your device and that server. Websites therefore see the VPN's address. The VPN provider can still see your traffic, and logging into accounts still identifies you — so a VPN changes who can observe you rather than making you anonymous.

Is an IP address personal information?

In many legal frameworks, yes. An IP address is generally treated as personal data because it can be linked to an identifiable subscriber, particularly when combined with other information held by an ISP. Privacy laws such as the GDPR regard it as personal data even though it does not name a person directly.

What is NAT?

Network Address Translation is the process your router uses to let many devices with private addresses share a single public address. It rewrites the source address and port of outgoing packets and maps replies back to the correct device. NAT conserves IPv4 addresses and hides the internal structure of your local network.

Why do I have an IPv4 address but no IPv6 address?

Because your ISP or local network has not enabled IPv6 yet, or your router is not configured for it. IPv6 requires end-to-end support. If your connection is IPv4-only, the IPv6 check on this page reports that no IPv6 address is available — that is a limitation of the network, not of your device.

Can someone hack me using my IP address?

Knowing an IP address alone does not let someone read your files or take control of your computer. Realistic risks include port scanning of exposed services, denial-of-service traffic, and social engineering that uses location hints to appear convincing. Keeping software updated, disabling unnecessary remote access and using strong unique passwords reduces risk far more than hiding an IP address.