What is my IP address?

What your public IP is

Every time you go online, your connection is assigned a public IP address — the number that lets servers know where to send data back to you. It's the return address on everything you request. When you load this page, your browser's request reaches our edge, which simply reads the source address it came from and shows it to you: that's the IP the whole internet sees you as. It's how websites pick a default language, how some services enforce regional licensing, and what changes when a VPN routes you through another country.

Public vs. private: why this differs from your device's IP

Look at your computer's network settings and you'll often see something like 192.168.1.5 — that's a private address, valid only inside your home or office network. Because there aren't enough IPv4 addresses to give every device a public one, your router uses NAT (Network Address Translation) to share a single public IP across all the devices behind it. So every phone, laptop and TV in your house typically shows the same public address to the outside world — the one on this page — while keeping distinct private addresses internally. IPv6 changes this picture by giving devices globally unique addresses directly, which is why you may see a long IPv6 value instead of a short IPv4 one.

Dynamic, static, and changing your IP

Most home addresses are dynamic: your ISP leases you one for a while and may hand you a different one when your router reconnects or the lease expires, so the value here is a snapshot, not a permanent ID. A static IP that never changes is usually a paid business feature, handy for hosting a server or allow-listing an address. If you want to present a different IP — for privacy or to appear in another region — a VPN or proxy is the tool: route through it and this page will show that server's address instead of yours. Simply restarting your router or waiting for a new lease can also rotate a dynamic IP.

What it does and doesn't expose

Your IP reveals roughly your region, your ISP, and whether you look like a home, mobile or business connection — useful context, but not your identity, name or street address by itself. The location shown describes the network, so city results are approximate and a VPN shows its server's location. To geolocate a different address or dig into its network, use the IP address lookup; to find the hostname behind an IP, try the reverse DNS lookup. Nothing here is logged or stored.