IPv4
IPv6
My IP Information Loading network details…
ISP —
ASN —
Organization —
City —
Region —
Country —
Timezone —
Hostname —
Coordinates —
Approximate location
Locating your network…

The marker shows the approximate centre of the area your provider serves — not your home, street or device. Being off by tens of kilometres is normal.

How your IP address actually works

An IP address is the return address of your internet connection. Every request your device sends is cut into packets, and each packet carries the address the answer must be delivered to. That is the whole reason this page can greet you with a number the moment it loads: you handed it over by connecting, the same way a postal envelope carries a sender address.

Why every website can see your address

There is no clever detection script behind this page. When your browser opens a connection, the network stack puts your public address in the source field of the packet, and the server reads it straight from the socket. Sites behind a CDN read it from a forwarded header that the edge network adds. You cannot switch this off, because a connection with no return address would simply never receive a reply.

What a site gets is only the address of the last hop between you and the internet — usually your router or your provider's gateway. Everything inside your home keeps a private address such as 192.168.1.12, which never leaves your network. This is why your phone, your laptop and your console all appear online under the same public address.

IPv4 and IPv6: why you may have one or both

IPv4 addresses look like 203.0.113.45 and come from a pool of roughly 4.3 billion combinations. That pool ran out years ago, so providers now share a single public address between many customers using carrier-grade translation. IPv6 solves the shortage with a far larger space and addresses written in hexadecimal, such as 2001:0db8:85a3::8a2e:0370:7334.

To test both independently, this page opens two separate connections: one to a host that only publishes an IPv4 record, and one to a host that only publishes an IPv6 record. If the second connection succeeds, your network really has a working IPv6 path. If it fails, there is nothing wrong with your device — your provider or your router simply does not offer IPv6 yet, which is still true for a large share of connections worldwide.

Because the two connections travel over different protocols, they can even end up on different networks. A laptop on a dual-stack fibre line often shows a stable IPv6 prefix next to a shared IPv4 address, and a phone on mobile data may show an IPv6 address while its IPv4 traffic is translated somewhere inside the carrier network.

Why the location on the map is often wrong

IP geolocation is a database lookup, not GPS. Providers register blocks of addresses with a regional registry, and geolocation vendors combine that registration data with routing information, latency measurements and customer submissions to guess where a block is used. Nothing in that chain measures where your device physically is.

When a vendor is unsure, it falls back to the centre of the area it believes the block serves — a city centre, a regional midpoint, or in the worst case the geographic centre of a whole country. That is why two lookup services can disagree about your city, why the marker can sit in a town you have never visited, and why coordinates should be read as "somewhere in this region" rather than an address.

Mobile networks, satellite links, corporate VPNs and business lines are the least accurate of all, because a single gateway can serve traffic from an entire province or country. If the map is wrong for you, the fix is with the geolocation database, not with this page: most vendors publish a correction form where the address holder can submit the right location.

How to change or hide your address

Most home connections receive a dynamic address, so rebooting the router or leaving it off long enough for the lease to expire can hand you a new one. A VPN or proxy goes further: your traffic is encrypted to a server, and every site then sees that server's address instead of yours. Tor chains several relays for stronger separation at the cost of speed.

None of this is perfect. A browser can still leak your real address through WebRTC even while a VPN is active, DNS queries can escape the tunnel, and the address a VPN gives you is frequently flagged as a datacentre range by streaming and banking services. It is worth verifying the result rather than trusting that a VPN is switched on: run the WebRTC leak test and the proxy check on this site right after connecting.

Finally, keep the risk in perspective. Your address is visible to every server you contact, and on its own it identifies a network rather than a person. Only your provider can map it to a subscriber, and normally only does so on a legal request. Sensible hygiene — updated router firmware, no unnecessary port forwarding, a VPN on public Wi-Fi — covers almost everything that matters.

Frequently asked questions about IP addresses

What is an IP address?

An IP address is the numeric label your network uses to send and receive data on the internet. Every packet that leaves your device carries a source address so the answer knows where to come back to. Your home router usually receives one public address from your provider and shares it with every phone, laptop and console behind it.

Why does this page already know my IP address?

Because you connected to it. An IP address is not something a website asks for and you agree to send: it is part of the transport layer of every request. Hiding it would break the connection, since the server would have no return address for the response. No permission prompt, script or tracker is involved.

Does my IP address reveal my home address?

No. IP geolocation resolves to the network that owns the address, not to a street. The coordinates you see usually point at the centre of a city or region served by your provider, and can easily be tens or hundreds of kilometres away from you. Only your internet provider can link an address to a subscriber, and normally only discloses that under a legal request.

Why does my IPv6 line say "Not detected"?

It means your connection had no working IPv6 path at the moment of the test. Many providers, mobile networks and office routers are still IPv4-only, so this is a completely normal result and not an error on your side. If your provider enables IPv6 later, the same test will start returning an address.

What is the difference between a public and a private IP address?

Private addresses such as 192.168.1.20, 10.0.0.5 or 172.16.x.x only exist inside your local network and are reused in millions of homes. The public address shown on this page is the one the rest of the internet actually sees. Your router translates between the two, which is why every device in your home appears online under the same public address.

Can I change my IP address?

Often, yes. Many residential connections get a dynamic address, so restarting the router or waiting for the lease to expire gives you a new one. A VPN or proxy replaces your visible address immediately, and mobile data gives you a different address from your home line. Business connections with a static address stay the same until the provider changes it.

Is it dangerous if somebody knows my IP address?

On its own it is low risk: your address is visible to every server you contact anyway. It can be used for rough geolocation, for rate limiting, or in rare cases for targeted traffic floods against your line. Keeping your router firmware updated, avoiding port forwarding you do not need and using a VPN on untrusted networks covers most of the real risk.

More IP and network tools
IP Lookup Look up any IPv4, IPv6 or domain name and see its network owner, location and reverse DNS record. WebRTC Leak Test Check whether your browser leaks your real IP address through WebRTC while a VPN is connected. Proxy & VPN Check See whether your current address looks like a VPN, proxy, Tor exit node or datacenter range. What Is My Browser Everything your browser tells a website about you: user agent, engine, screen, language and more. Subnet Calculator Turn any CIDR block into network address, broadcast, usable host range and wildcard mask.

What Is My IP Address?

The answer to what is my IP address is the number printed at the top of this page: the public IPv4 address every website sees when you connect, with your IPv6 address beside it when your network has one. Below it you get the ISP and ASN that own the address, the reverse DNS name, the timezone and an approximate location on a map. Nothing is installed and the check finishes as the page loads.

What the checker shows, and where each value comes from

The large number at the top is your public IPv4 address, read off the connection your browser opened to load this page. The IPv6 line is filled by a separate request to a host that publishes only an IPv6 record, so “Not detected” is a real result about your network, not a page error.

The panel below lists the ISP that operates the address, the ASN and organisation that own the routed block, the city, region, country and timezone a geolocation database ties to it, the reverse DNS hostname and the coordinates on the map. That hostname comes from a PTR record the address holder publishes, and usually encodes the provider and access network rather than anything about you.

The address is the one thing a site cannot avoid seeing; everything else — user agent, engine, screen size, language, fonts — is volunteered by the browser, and the what is my browser check lists that side of the handshake.

IPv4 and IPv6: why you may see one, the other, or both

IPv4 addresses are 32 bits written as four numbers, like 203.0.113.45, which caps the whole internet at about 4.3 billion of them — a pool that ran out years ago, so providers now share single addresses between many subscribers. IPv6 addresses are 128 bits in hexadecimal, like 2001:0db8:85a3::8a2e:0370:7334, with room for every connection to hold a block of its own.

Most modern lines are dual-stack, so the answer to what is my IP address is two numbers at once. A blank IPv6 row means your provider, router or office network offers no IPv6 path — still common, and not fixable on the device. The two protocols travel separate routes, so a stable IPv6 prefix often sits beside a shared IPv4 address on the same line. Addresses are routed in blocks, written in CIDR form such as a /24 of IPv4 or the /56 delegated to a home router, and the subnet calculator turns any prefix into its network address, host range and mask.

Why the location on the map is usually wrong by tens of kilometres

IP geolocation is a database lookup, not a measurement. Vendors start from the registry records showing which provider holds a block, then refine them with routing data, latency probes and provider feeds. Nothing in that chain observes where your device is, so what comes back is where the ISP registered or uses the range — usually the centre of the area that exchange or region serves.

The error margin is wide, and the vendors say so themselves: MaxMind and its competitors publish city-level accuracy as the share of addresses that land within 50 km of the true location, and that share is well short of 100% even in the best-mapped countries. Being off by tens of kilometres is the normal case. On mobile networks, satellite links, corporate VPNs and carrier-grade NAT ranges it is worse — one gateway can serve an entire province, putting the marker hundreds of kilometres away or in another country.

Say it plainly: an IP address does not reveal a street address. Anyone claiming they can get your house number or your name from an IP alone is wrong or bluffing. Only your provider holds the record linking an address to a subscriber, and it hands that over on a court order. If the city here is wrong, usually because a block was recycled from another region, a correction request to the geolocation vendors fixes it in a few weeks. To see what those databases say about another address or a domain, use the ip address lookup and compare two sources before believing either.

Public, private and carrier-grade NAT addresses

The address on this page is public: globally routed and visible to every server you contact. The address your device reports in its own settings — 192.168.1.20, 10.0.0.5 or something in 172.16–172.31 — is private, reserved for local networks and reused in millions of homes. Your router translates between the two, which is why phone, laptop and console all appear under one public address.

There is a third case. If the router's WAN address is also private, or sits in 100.64.0.0/10, your provider has placed you behind carrier-grade NAT and shares one public address across many customers. Browsing is unaffected, but inbound connections fail, so port forwarding and self-hosting break. Comparing the router's WAN address with the number shown here tells you which case you are in.

Why your IP address changes

Most residential addresses are leased, not owned. The router asks your provider for one over DHCP and gets it for a limited time; when the lease expires, or after a reboot, a different address can come back from the pool. Mobile connections change more often, since the address belongs to whichever carrier gateway your session lands on. A fixed address normally means paying for a static-IP option.

What a website can and cannot learn from your address

A site can see which network you came from and read its ASN and owner, place you roughly by region, judge whether the range looks residential, datacentre, proxy or Tor, apply rate limits and geo-blocks, and — behind a CDN — read your address from the X-Forwarded-For header the edge adds.

It cannot see your name, your street, your household, what else you have open, or anything on your device. Correlation is what turns an address into an identification, and that comes from reused accounts and usernames, not from the number. To see how your current address looks from the outside — flagged as a VPN, a hosting range or a clean residential line — the vpn check reports what the detection databases say about it.

Changing or hiding the address you show

On a dynamic line, rebooting the router or leaving it off past the lease can hand you a new address. A VPN or proxy replaces the visible one immediately, since sites then see the exit server instead of you; Tor chains relays for stronger separation at the cost of speed.

None of it is absolute. A VPN moves trust to the operator rather than removing it, DNS queries can escape the tunnel, and datacentre ranges are routinely blocked by streaming and banking services. Browsers can also expose the real address through WebRTC while the tunnel is up, so verify instead of assuming: ask what is my IP address again and confirm the number moved, then run the webrtc leak test to be sure nothing leaks around it.

Frequently asked questions about IP addresses

Does my IP address reveal my home address?

No. An IP address resolves to the network that carries your traffic, not to a building, and the best a public database gives is a city or region that is often tens of kilometres out. People who threaten otherwise are usually reading a city from a lookup and guessing the rest, or have pieced your name together from reused usernames and social profiles. Only your provider can link an address to a subscriber, and it does that on a court order.

Why does my location show a different city than where I am located?

Because the lookup returns where your provider registered or routes the address block, not where your device is. Traffic often leaves through a regional hub, so the city shown can be hundreds of kilometres away, and providers regularly recycle blocks that used to serve another region. It is a stale database record, not evidence that anyone moved or tracked you. Submitting a correction to the geolocation vendors fixes it, typically in a few weeks.

Why is my router's WAN IP different from the public IP shown here?

Your provider has put you behind carrier-grade NAT. The router gets an address from a private or shared range such as 100.64.0.0/10, and the provider translates it onto one public address used by many customers at once. Nothing is broken and the router is not hiding anything from you. Outbound browsing is unaffected, but inbound connections fail, so port forwarding, remote desktop and self-hosting need a static address or a tunnel service.

Why does my IP address keep changing every time I connect?

Because the address is leased to you, not owned by you. Your router or mobile device requests one over DHCP, the provider grants it for a limited period, and each reconnection or lease expiry can return a different address from the pool. Mobile and pocket Wi-Fi connections change most often, since the address belongs to whichever carrier gateway your session lands on. A fixed address normally requires a static-IP option on a business plan.

Why is my IPv6 address not being detected?

Because no working IPv6 path existed when the test ran. Many providers, mobile networks and office routers are still IPv4-only, so a blank IPv6 line is a normal result rather than a fault. It also appears when the address on your adapter is link-local or unique-local — anything starting fe80, fc or fd cannot reach the public IPv6 internet — or when a firewall policy blocks IPv6 outbound. A second opinion from another IPv6 test confirms which it is.

Someone knows my public IP — can they DDoS me?

Technically yes, realistically it is rare. Flooding a home line takes rented botnet or booter capacity, which costs money and is a crime, so most people making the threat are bluffing from a resolver that showed them your city. Reduce the exposure anyway: disable remote administration on the router, drop unnecessary port forwards, keep its firmware current, and reboot for a new lease if traffic really does saturate the line.

Are my location and IP address visible when I use a VPN?

Sites see the VPN server's address and the location attached to it, not yours, for as long as the tunnel holds. That is not full anonymity: the VPN operator still sees your real address, many services recognise the range as a VPN and treat you accordingly, and a browser can leak your true address through WebRTC or DNS while the VPN is connected. Reload this page after connecting and confirm the number actually changed.