What Is My IP

Every device that talks on the internet needs an address so replies can find their way back, the way a letter needs a return address. The address websites see for you is your public IP address, shown at the top of this page. Here is what it is, why it changes, and what it does and does not reveal.

How to find your IP address

Open this page. The public IP address of your connection appears at the top, with whether it is IPv4 or IPv6 and the country it is registered to. Press Copy IP to copy it, and Check again after switching networks, for example from Wi-Fi to mobile data, or after turning a VPN on or off.

Under it are the details your browser tells every website it visits: browser, operating system, language, time zone and screen size.

Public and private addresses

Your phone or laptop usually has two kinds of address at once.

The private address is the one your Wi-Fi router gives your device inside your home, such as 192.168.1.5. The same private ranges, 192.168.x.x, 10.x.x.x and 172.16 to 172.31, are reused in millions of homes and offices; they never appear on the internet. That is the address your phone's Wi-Fi settings show.

The public address is the one your provider gives your connection. Your router translates between the two, so every device in the house goes out to the internet under the same public address. That is the address websites see, and the one this page shows.

This is why the number here differs from the one in your phone's settings, and why everyone at home sees the same address on this page.

IPv4 and IPv6

IPv4, from 1981, writes an address as four numbers from 0 to 255, such as 203.0.113.7. That allows about 4.3 billion addresses, and the regional registries ran out of new ones years ago.

IPv6, its successor, uses 128-bit addresses written in eight groups of hexadecimal digits, with zeros shortened, such as 2405:201:6000::1. There are enough IPv6 addresses for every device on earth many times over.

Which one you see depends on your provider and network. Many Indian mobile networks give phones an IPv6 address, so the same person often sees IPv6 on mobile data and IPv4 on home broadband or office Wi-Fi.

Why your IP address changes

Most home broadband and mobile connections use dynamic addresses: the provider lends one from a pool and can hand out a different one when the router restarts, the phone reconnects, or the lease simply expires. A static IP, one that never changes, is usually a paid extra for businesses that run servers or need to be allowed through a firewall.

Mobile networks go further. Because IPv4 addresses ran short, providers put many customers behind one shared public IPv4 address, a set-up called carrier-grade NAT, with its own reserved range of internal addresses. So on mobile data, the IPv4 address websites see may be shared by thousands of other users at the same moment.

What your IP address reveals

An IP address is registered to a provider, and providers register their address blocks by country and often by region. So a website can tell, from your address alone:

• the country you connect through, usually correctly;
• the provider, such as a broadband company or mobile network;
• a rough area, sometimes a city, often wrongly on mobile data.

It does not tell a website your name, your phone number, or your home address. Only your provider's records can link an address at a given moment to a customer account.

The country on this page comes from a public table that maps address blocks to countries, compiled from the registries' records and published under CC BY 4.0. It can be wrong for mobile data, satellite connections and VPNs.

VPNs and proxies

A VPN sends your traffic through its own server, so websites see the VPN server's address instead of yours, and the country shown here becomes the VPN server's country. Checking this page with the VPN on and off is the simplest test that a VPN is working. If the address and country are the same both times, traffic is not going through the VPN.

Office networks and some Wi-Fi hotspots also route traffic through a proxy, in which case the address here is the proxy's.

How this page reads the address

When your browser asks for a page, the request reaches the hosting company's front server first, which passes it on with your address in a header called X-Forwarded-For. This page's server reads the first address in that header, looks up its country in the local table, and sends the answer back to your browser. The address is not written to any database or log by this tool, and every cache along the way is told not to keep the answer, so no visitor can see another's address.

Common questions about IP addresses

Can two people have the same IP? Yes. Everyone behind one router shares its public address, and on mobile data, carrier-grade NAT shares one address among many customers.

Does incognito mode hide my IP? No. Incognito stops your browser saving history and cookies; websites still see your public address.

Why do some sites say "unusual traffic from your network"? Often because a shared mobile address is also used by someone sending automated traffic. Switching between Wi-Fi and mobile data gives you a different address.

When you need to know your IP address

• Allow-listing. Some office systems, bank portals for businesses, servers and databases only accept connections from approved addresses. The administrator asks for "your IP" to add it to the list; give them the address shown here.
• Remote access and games. Setting up remote desktop, a game server or a home camera may ask for your public address. Remember it can change if it is dynamic.
• Checking a VPN is working, as described above.
• Support calls. Your internet provider's support team may ask for it to trace a connection problem.
• Security alerts. When a service emails "new sign-in from IP 203.0.113.7", compare it with your own address here to see whether the sign-in was you.

Keeping your IP address private

There is little need to hide a dynamic address for everyday browsing: it changes regularly, is shared with others on mobile data, and points to your provider rather than to you. If you want websites not to see it at all, use a reputable VPN, which replaces it with the VPN's address, or the Tor Browser, which routes traffic through several volunteer relays. Be careful with free VPNs, which often pay for themselves by collecting what they can see of your browsing.

Do not post your address publicly together with your name, because combined with other clues it narrows down your provider and area.

What this tool assumes

• The address shown is the first address in the X-Forwarded-For header set by the hosting front server, or in X-Real-IP if that is the only one sent.
• The country comes from a local copy of the geo-whois-asn-country table (CC BY 4.0); no outside service is asked.
• Browser, system, language, time zone and screen are read in your browser tab and are not sent anywhere.
• The answer is marked not to be cached by browsers or CDNs, and the tool does not store the address.