What this page shows and where it comes from
When your browser loads this page it asks our own small server function at the network edge, /api/ip, who is calling. The answer is the public IP address your connection arrived from, as seen by Cloudflare, together with the country, region, city, network name and autonomous system number (ASN) that Cloudflare associates with it, and the TLS and HTTP versions your browser negotiated. We store none of it.
A website only ever sees one address per connection, and many homes now have both IPv4 and IPv6 — your browser picks one, usually IPv6 if it works. To show both, the page makes two tiny requests to public echo services (ipify, with icanhazip asked at the same time as a backup): one reachable only over IPv4, the other only over IPv6. Each simply replies with the address it saw. For each address the page then asks Cloudflare’s DNS-over-HTTPS resolver (1.1.1.1, with Google’s resolver as a backup) for its reverse-DNS hostname, and asks RIPEstat, the RIPE NCC’s public routing database, which network announces the second address and roughly where it is. Your browser contacts these services directly; they see your address just as any website does.
The page is careful about what a failed check means. If the IPv6 check fails but the IPv4 one worked, you genuinely have no IPv6 (or, if it timed out, broken IPv6). If both checks fail — usually a privacy extension or company firewall blocking the echo services — the rows say couldn’t check rather than guessing, and the address your browser used for this page still appears in its own row. The Your browser card is worked out on your device from the user-agent string, navigator.languages and your time zone; for a full breakdown of that string use the user-agent parser.
Public versus private IP addresses
Your router gives every device at home a private address, typically in 192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.x, and translates all their traffic to one public address on the internet (NAT). That is why your laptop’s network settings show a different number from the one at the top of this page, and why every device in the house shows the same public IP here.
| Range | Meaning |
|---|---|
10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, 192.168.0.0/16 | Private (RFC 1918) — local networks only |
100.64.0.0/10 | Carrier-grade NAT — your provider shares one public IPv4 address between customers |
169.254.0.0/16, fe80::/10 | Link-local — self-assigned; on IPv4 it usually means DHCP failed |
fc00::/7 | IPv6 unique local — the IPv6 private range |
2000::/3 | Global IPv6 — public; normally no NAT, and devices rotate privacy addresses |
Paste any address into the checker at the bottom of the tool to classify it, expand an abbreviated IPv6 address or get its reverse-DNS name. For a public address, Look up provider also finds the network that announces it, its approximate country and its hostname. If your router’s WAN address is in 100.64.0.0/10, you are behind carrier-grade NAT, which is why port forwarding and hosting game servers may not work — the port checker confirms it, and the subnet calculator works out ranges and masks.
How accurate is IP location?
IP geolocation is a database lookup, not GPS. Addresses are registered to providers in blocks, and the database records where a block is used. The country is right in the vast majority of cases. The city is much less reliable: it is often the nearest large town or the place where your provider’s equipment sits, so someone in Bolton can easily appear as Manchester or even London, and mobile data can appear hundreds of miles away. It never reveals your street or house.
The main address is located with Cloudflare’s database; the second address in the IPv4/IPv6 rows with the free GeoLite data published through RIPEstat, so the two can disagree by a town or two. That is why the map link opens a wide area on OpenStreetMap rather than a pin, and why we don’t embed a map at all — loading one would send your location to a map provider before you ask. If a website insists you are in the wrong country, it is using the same kind of database; your provider can ask the database companies to correct it. Location says nothing about speed: for that, run the internet speed test.
VPN, relay, proxy and leak hints
The network card looks at who owns each of your addresses. Home broadband and mobile networks are named after the provider — BT, Virgin Media, Sky, Vodafone, EE. Other owners mean your traffic is being carried by someone else:
| Owner shown | What it usually means |
|---|---|
| Cloudflare | Cloudflare WARP / the 1.1.1.1 app, iCloud Private Relay or Microsoft Edge Secure Network. On this site Cloudflare also tells us directly when WARP is switched on. |
| Akamai, Fastly or Apple | iCloud Private Relay (Safari and Mail on Apple devices) |
Google LLC, or a hostname ending googlezip.net | A Google proxy: Chrome’s IP Protection in Incognito, the Private Prefetch Proxy used when you open a Google Search result, or Google One VPN |
| Amazon, Microsoft, DigitalOcean, M247, Datacamp… | A VPN, proxy or corporate gateway hosted in a data centre |
| A named VPN brand | That VPN |
The Google case explains a common puzzle: another “what is my IP” site shows fetch.tunnel.googlezip.net because it was opened from a search result and Chrome prefetched it through Google. This page fetches your address after it has loaded, straight from your browser, so it sees your own connection — and it shows the hostname so you can spot the tunnel anywhere.
We also compare the two protocols. If your IPv4 address belongs to a VPN but your IPv6 address still belongs to your home provider, the page raises an IPv6 leak warning: the VPN covers only IPv4, and any site reached over IPv6 sees who you really are. Finally, the device’s time zone is compared with the network’s by actual clock offset, so a phone set to Jersey or the Isle of Man on a London-registered address doesn’t trip a false alarm. These are hints, not proof — some VPNs use residential addresses. For a deeper check run the WebRTC leak test, and use the DNS lookup or WHOIS lookup to dig into a hostname or domain.
Frequently asked questions
Why is the IP address here different from the one in my computer’s settings?
Your computer shows its private address on your home network, such as 192.168.1.20, assigned by your router. Websites see your router’s public address, which is shared by every device in the house. Both are correct; they are addresses on two different networks, joined by the router’s network address translation (NAT).
Why does it show IPv6 when I expected IPv4, or the other way round?
Your browser chooses which protocol to use for each connection, preferring IPv6 when it works, so the big address is whichever one it picked. The IPv4 and IPv6 rows check each protocol on its own. If the IPv6 row says none while IPv4 worked, your connection has no IPv6; if it says couldn’t check, an extension or firewall blocked the test and nothing is implied.
Can someone find my home address from my IP?
Not from the IP alone. Public databases only locate an address to a town or region, and often get that wrong. Your provider knows which customer had an address at a given time, but it only discloses that to the police or courts with a legal order. Your IP does reveal your provider and rough area.
Does this site store or log my IP address?
No. Our edge function reads the address from the request, sends it back and forgets it. To fill in the rest, your browser asks ipify or icanhazip for your IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, Cloudflare DNS (1.1.1.1) for hostnames and RIPEstat for the second address’s provider. Those services see your address the way any website does. Cloudflare, which carries our traffic, keeps standard short-lived security logs.
What is the hostname, or reverse DNS, of my IP?
It is the name your provider attaches to the address with a PTR record, such as a name ending btcentralplus.com for BT or virginm.net for Virgin Media. It often names the provider, sometimes the town or line type. Many IPv6 addresses and mobile networks have none, which is normal. A hostname ending googlezip.net means Chrome is sending traffic through Google’s proxy rather than your own connection.
How do I check whether my VPN is working?
Note the addresses shown here with the VPN off, then connect and press refresh. A working VPN changes both the IPv4 and IPv6 rows to the VPN’s network and usually the country. If only IPv4 changes and IPv6 still shows your home provider, the page warns of an IPv6 leak. If nothing changes, traffic is not going through the VPN.
What are ISP and ASN?
The ISP is the company providing your internet connection. The ASN, or autonomous system number, identifies the network that announces your address block to the rest of the internet, for example AS2856 for BT. Network engineers use the ASN to identify a provider precisely, because company names on IP records vary.