What Is My IP Address?
Your public IP, where it geolocates, the network behind it, and whether sites can tell you are on a proxy.
- Free
- No signup
- IPv4 & IPv6
- Instant
Your public IP address
Location
Network
Detection
Your browser
How to read your result
Why the location points at your ISP
IP geolocation resolves to the network that owns the address, not to your home. That is usually the nearest exchange or the registered address of your provider, which can be a different city entirely. A wrong city is normal and not a sign anything is broken.
What a datacenter flag means
It means the address belongs to a hosting provider rather than a consumer ISP. Plenty of legitimate traffic comes from datacenters, but many sites treat the flag as a reason to show a CAPTCHA, so it matters if you are being challenged repeatedly.
How to tell your proxy is working
The address shown here should be your proxy exit, not your real one. If the verdict chip says a proxy was detected and the location matches where you expect to exit, it is working. If your own IP appears, traffic is bypassing the proxy.
How this IP checker works
Open the page
The check runs automatically. There is nothing to enter and no button to press.
Read your address and verdict
Your public IP appears first, with a chip saying whether a proxy, VPN or Tor exit was detected.
Compare the details
Work through the location, network and browser groups to spot anything inconsistent, like a timezone that contradicts your IP.
What this tool checks
Every field the checker returns, what it actually describes, and why anyone would care.
| Field | What it means | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Public IP | The address the internet routes back to you. | It is what every site you visit logs first. |
| IP version | Whether the connection used IPv4 or IPv6. | Some proxies only cover one, which leaks the other. |
| Country, region, city | The best estimate from our geolocation providers. | Determines localisation, pricing and geo-restricted content. |
| Coordinates | A point and an accuracy radius, not a street address. | The radius tells you how much to trust the city. |
| Timezone (IP vs browser) | The zone the IP resolves to, next to the one your browser reports. | A mismatch is one of the cheapest proxy-detection signals there is. |
| ISP | The provider carrying traffic on the last hop. | Consumer ISPs read as residential; hosting names read as machine traffic. |
| Organisation | The entity registered to the address block. | Reveals corporate networks, universities and resellers. |
| ASN and route | The autonomous system number and announced prefix. | Blocklists usually operate at ASN level, not single IPs. |
| Proxy / VPN / Tor | Whether the address is known to belong to an anonymising service. | This is what a site checks before challenging you. |
| Datacenter vs residential | Whether the block belongs to a hosting provider. | Datacenter ranges are blocked far more aggressively. |
| Abuse score | A reputation figure for the network the address sits on. | A noisy neighbour on your subnet can get you challenged. |
| Browser locale and hardware | What your browser volunteers about itself. | These values are compared against your IP for consistency. |
What an IP address is
An IP address is the return address on every packet your device sends. Without one, a server would have no way to route a response back to you, which is why you cannot browse without revealing one to each site you visit. It is assigned by your internet provider from a block they have been allocated, not chosen by you or by your device.
Two versions are in use. IPv4 addresses look like 192.0.2.1 and there are only about four billion of them, which ran out years ago. IPv6 addresses are far longer and effectively unlimited. Most connections now carry both, and that matters more than it sounds: a proxy configured only for IPv4 will happily let your real IPv6 address reach the destination, which is one of the most common ways people leak their location while believing they are covered.
Your address is almost certainly shared. Everything behind your router leaves through one public address via NAT, and many providers put hundreds of subscribers behind a single address using carrier-grade NAT. It is also usually dynamic, reassigned from a pool when the lease expires or the router reboots.
What sites learn from it
The address itself is only the beginning. From it, any site can look up the country and an approximate city, the ISP carrying the traffic, the organisation the block is registered to, and the ASN announcing it to the rest of the internet. That is enough to pick a language and currency, apply regional pricing, enforce licensing restrictions, and rate limit abuse.
It is also enough to judge you. Commercial reputation feeds classify address ranges as residential, mobile, hosting, VPN or Tor, and score them for past abuse. Traffic arriving from a datacenter range gets challenged far more often than the same request from a consumer connection, regardless of intent. If you find yourself solving CAPTCHAs constantly, the datacenter flag above is usually the reason.
Location accuracy deserves a caveat. Geolocation resolves the network that owns the address, not your home, so it commonly lands on a regional exchange or your provider’s registered office. If you want to see how much the databases disagree on any given address, the IP geolocation lookup queries seven of them side by side.
How to change or hide your IP
You cannot make an IP address disappear, because something has to receive the response. What you can do is have another machine make the request for you. A proxy does this at the connection level, a VPN does it for all traffic on the device, and Tor does it through several relays at a heavy cost in speed. In each case the destination logs the intermediary rather than you.
Which one to reach for depends on what is checking. Commercial VPN ranges are catalogued and widely flagged, so a VPN often makes you more conspicuous to a site that cares, not less. Residential proxies route through real consumer connections and read as ordinary users, while datacenter proxies are faster and cheaper but carry the hosting flag.
None of this touches your browser fingerprint. Changing your exit address while your timezone, fonts and graphics hardware stay identical leaves you recognisable across every IP you use, and a timezone that contradicts your new location is itself a giveaway. The fingerprint checker shows what remains visible after the address changes.
FAQ
IP address questions
What is my IP address used for?
Every site you visit needs your IP to send responses back to you. Beyond routing, sites use it to estimate your location, choose a language or currency, apply rate limits, and decide whether your traffic looks like a person or a machine.
Is my IP address private information?
It is not secret — every server you connect to sees it. It is also not directly identifying on its own, since it usually points at your ISP rather than you. In many jurisdictions it counts as personal data because it can be combined with other records to single out a subscriber.
Why is my IP location wrong?
Geolocation databases map address blocks to places using registry records and routing data, not GPS. Your address may be registered to a regional hub or to your ISP head office. Country accuracy is high; city accuracy is often a guess, especially on mobile networks.
What's the difference between IPv4 and IPv6?
IPv4 uses four numbers like 192.0.2.1 and has run out of free addresses. IPv6 uses longer hexadecimal addresses and has effectively unlimited supply. Many connections now have both, which matters because a proxy covering only IPv4 will leak your real IPv6 address.
How do I hide my IP address?
Route your traffic through something that connects on your behalf: a proxy, a VPN, or Tor. Each replaces the address sites see with one belonging to the service. None of them hides your browser fingerprint, which is a separate signal.
Does a VPN change my IP?
Yes. Sites see the VPN server address instead of yours. Be aware that most commercial VPN ranges are well known and flagged as such, so a VPN can make you more conspicuous to sites that check, not less.
Why does my IP change by itself?
Most home connections use dynamic addresses leased from a pool. Your ISP can reassign one when the lease expires, when your router reboots, or when it reorganises its network. A static address that never changes is usually a paid add-on.
What is an ASN?
An Autonomous System Number identifies the network that announces a block of addresses to the rest of the internet. It is the level most blocklists and reputation systems actually operate at, which is why two addresses from the same ASN tend to be treated identically.
Can two devices share one IP address?
Yes, and most do. Everything behind your router shares one public address through NAT, and many ISPs put hundreds of subscribers behind a single address using carrier-grade NAT. This is why a site blocking an IP can affect people who did nothing.