IP Geolocation
Find the geographic location, ISP, and network details of any IP address.
Input
Quick Examples
Results
Enter an IP address and click Lookup to find its location.
How IP geolocation actually works (and why it's imperfect)
Nothing in the IP address itself contains your location. IP geolocation works by cross-referencing an IP against databases that track which blocks (/16, /24) are allocated to which ISP in which region. The main sources:
- Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) — ARIN (North America), RIPE (Europe), APNIC (Asia-Pacific), LACNIC (Latin America), AFRINIC (Africa). They allocate IP blocks to ISPs; this anchors country-level accuracy.
- ISP announcements — BGP routing tables show which network (ASN) is advertising an IP block, which hints at the ISP.
- WHOIS records — contain registrant address for the allocated block (often a corporate HQ, not end-user location).
- User-contributed data — MaxMind, IP2Location et al. refine city-level accuracy via crowdsourced WiFi positioning, login data from major services, etc.
Accuracy breakdown:
- Country — 99%+. Rarely wrong.
- Region / state — 75-85%. Usually right, sometimes shows ISP HQ instead of end user.
- City — 55-80%. Metro areas better than rural.
- Specific street address — never. Anyone claiming 1km accuracy from IP alone is lying.
Mobile data (5G, LTE) is the hardest — carriers pool IPs across huge regions.
Legitimate uses for IP geolocation
- Content localisation — show the right language, currency, date format.
- Fraud detection — flag logins from unexpected countries, new shipping addresses from high-risk regions.
- Compliance — serve GDPR consent to EU users, block services where the business isn't licensed.
- Analytics — understand audience geography (our own GA4 showed BuildStudio is 87% India).
- CDN routing — serve from the nearest edge. Cloudflare, AWS CloudFront do this automatically.
- Security monitoring — investigate suspicious login attempts.
What IP geolocation is not for: surveillance, precise tracking, identifying individuals. VPNs and mobile IPs defeat these trivially.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I find the geographic location of an IP address?
Enter any IPv4 or IPv6 address. The tool returns country, region, city, approximate latitude/longitude, ISP, ASN (autonomous system number) and organisation. Data comes from public IP geolocation databases — updated regularly.
How accurate is IP geolocation?
Country: ~99% accurate. Region / state: ~80%. City-level: 60–75% (urban areas better than rural). IP geolocation never pinpoints a physical address — it maps to the ISP's allocation range. Good enough for content localisation, fraud checks, analytics; not for surveillance.
Can I look up my own IP address and location?
Yes. Leave the IP field blank or click "My IP" — the tool detects your public IP and shows the geolocation your own ISP broadcasts. Useful for testing VPN leaks, checking if a proxy is active, or seeing how geo-targeted ads see you.
What's the difference between IPv4 and IPv6 geolocation?
IPv4 is well-mapped (older, fewer addresses). IPv6 geolocation is less accurate because mobile carriers often pool IPv6 across wide regions. Where both are known for a host, IPv4 data is typically more precise.
Is looking up an IP address legal?
Yes — public IP addresses and their ISP allocations are public metadata. WHOIS, BGP announcements and reverse-DNS are all published by design. Respecting privacy means using the data responsibly — analytics, fraud prevention and localisation are fine; targeted harassment is not.
Smarter quality checks. Faster deployments.
Better apps.
