What this page shows — and how
Every device connected to the internet speaks from an IP address. Inside your home, your router hands out private addresses (you may have seen 192.168.1.something) that only exist within your walls. To the outside world, though, your whole household shares one public address, assigned by your internet provider — and that public address is what this page shows, together with the details the internet attaches to it: the approximate city and region, country, postal area, time zone, and the provider whose network you are on.
Here is the part most IP pages do not explain, and this one will: your browser cannot see its own public address. It knows the private one only. So this page asks two small, free lookup services a simple question — "what address did this request come from?" Your IPv4 comes from ipify, the extra details from ipapi.co, and your IPv6 is checked against ipify's IPv6 endpoint. By design, those services see your IP address — that is the only way the question can be answered, and it is the same thing every website you have ever visited sees. What we can promise is our side of it: the result is displayed in your browser and stored nowhere by us, and if a service fails to answer, the page says so instead of guessing.
Why people look up their IP address
- Checking a VPN works: look up before and after connecting — address and city should change.
- Remote access and gaming: hosting a game server or reaching a home camera usually starts with knowing your public address.
- Troubleshooting: some services ask for your IP to allow-list you, or to check whether you are behind a shared or blocked address.
- Spotting the wrong network: the provider line quickly confirms whether you are on home broadband, a phone hotspot or a work connection.
- Curiosity about tracking: this is the address (and rough city) that every site can infer about you without any cookies at all — worth seeing once with your own eyes.
Things worth knowing
Your address probably changes. Most home connections have a dynamic IP: your provider reassigns it from time to time, and restarting your router often changes it. Nothing is broken when today's number differs from last month's. You are sharing more than you think: everyone in your home — and, on some networks, whole apartment buildings or mobile customers — can share a single public address. And the location is the provider's, not yours: the city shown is where your provider's equipment for your address block lives, which is why it can sit one town over. It is a rough neighbourhood, never a street address, and no IP lookup can turn it into one on its own.
Frequently asked questions
What is an IP address?
An IP address is the number that identifies your connection on the internet, the way a return address identifies a letter. The public IP shown here belongs to your router or your provider's gateway, and it is the address every website you visit sees. Devices inside your home also have private addresses (often starting 192.168) that only work within your own network and are never shown here.
Why does this page need a lookup service?
Honestly: because your browser cannot see its own public address. Your computer knows its private address inside your home network, but the public address is assigned further out, by your provider. So this page asks a small lookup service (ipify, with details from ipapi.co) 'what address did this request come from?' — which means that service necessarily sees your IP address, exactly as every website you visit does. We show what comes back and store nothing.
How accurate is the location shown?
The country is almost always right; the city is an estimate and can be off by tens of miles. The location comes from databases that map blocks of IP addresses to the provider's equipment, not from GPS — it often shows where your provider's local hub is rather than your street. It can never show your home address. Treat it as 'roughly where your connection appears to be', which is also all that websites can infer about you from an IP address alone.
What is the difference between IPv4 and IPv6?
IPv4 is the older format — four numbers separated by dots, like 203.0.113.25. There are only about 4.3 billion of those, so the world is moving to IPv6, written in hexadecimal groups separated by colons, which offers effectively unlimited addresses. Many connections have both. This page shows your IPv4 always, and your IPv6 when your connection can reach an IPv6 service; 'not reachable' simply means your network or provider is not offering IPv6 to you yet, which is common and harmless.
I use a VPN. What will this page show?
It will show the VPN's exit address — the city and provider of the VPN server — not your home connection. That is exactly what websites see, which makes this page a handy VPN check: turn the VPN on and off and press 'Look up again'; if the address and city change, the VPN is doing its job. The same applies to iCloud Private Relay and work VPNs.
The honest exception: most TOOLS411 tools talk to nobody. This one must ask a lookup service for your public address — that is how IP lookup works, and the service sees your IP just as every website does. We store nothing on our side; the answer lives only in your browser.