IP address lookup

What an IP lookup reveals

Every device that talks to the internet does so through a public IP address, and that address is allocated to a network registered to a known organization and region. Looking one up tells you the approximate location, the ISP or hosting provider behind it, and the autonomous system (network) that routes it. That makes it the go-to tool for a handful of jobs: checking where a suspicious login or order appears to come from, identifying who hosts a server you're investigating, understanding the traffic in a web log, or confirming a VPN is presenting the country you expect. This page geolocates any IPv4 or IPv6 address you enter (and shows your own when you arrive).

How geolocation works — and why it's approximate

There is no location encoded inside an IP address. Geolocation providers infer it by combining several sources: the regional internet registries' records of which address blocks were allocated to which organization and country; routing and ASN data showing where the traffic for a block enters the global network; location hints published by ISPs; and large sets of crowd-sourced measurements. Your IP is matched against that database. The consequence is a predictable accuracy gradient — country is reliable (usually 95%+), region is decent, and city is a best guess that can be well off for mobile networks (one gateway covers a huge area), corporate and cloud ranges (registered centrally), and any address sitting behind a VPN or proxy, where you see the exit node's location rather than the user's.

Network, not coordinates: ISP, organization and ASN

Often the most useful part of a lookup isn't the map pin but the network behind the address. The ISP and organization tell you who provides the connection; the type hints whether it's a residential, business, hosting/datacenter or mobile address (useful for spotting bots and server traffic versus real visitors); and the AS number identifies the operator that actually announces the route, which is the firmest answer to "whose network is this?". These signals are what fraud, analytics and abuse-investigation workflows lean on, precisely because they're harder to fake than a city.

Going further

An IP lookup is usually a starting point. To find the hostname registered for an address, run the reverse DNS lookup; to explore the whole network an address belongs to — its routes and registered range — follow the AS number into the ASN lookup. If you only want to know your own public address and what it exposes, the what-is-my-IP page is the quicker route. The lookup is proxied through our server and never stored. Curious why the city is sometimes off? Our guide on how IP geolocation works explains where the data comes from and why it's city-level at best.