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What Is My IP Address?

Your public IP address, detected instantly — no sign-up, nothing installed, nothing stored.

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Public vs. private IP address

The number above is your public IP address — the one every website you visit can see, assigned by your internet service provider. It's different from the private IP address (something like 192.168.1.x) your router assigns to your specific device on your home network. Your router uses NAT (Network Address Translation) to translate between the two, which is also why every device on your home Wi-Fi shares the same public IP.

Understanding IP Addresses

An IP address is the internet's equivalent of a postal address — it's how data finds its way back to your device. Here's what the number actually means and why it matters.

IPv4 vs. IPv6

IPv4 addresses (like 203.0.113.42) use four numbers 0-255 separated by dots, giving about 4.3 billion possible addresses — a number the internet has already outgrown. IPv6 addresses (like 2001:db8::8a2e:370:7334) use a much longer hexadecimal format designed to provide an effectively unlimited address space as more devices come online. Most networks today run both simultaneously during the transition.

Why your IP changes

Most residential connections use dynamic IP addresses that your ISP can reassign — after a router restart, a DHCP lease renewal, or on the provider's own schedule. A VPN, proxy, or switching networks (home to mobile data, for instance) will also change the public IP a website sees, since you're now routing through a different upstream connection.

What an IP address does and doesn't reveal

An IP address can be mapped to an approximate geographic region — often accurate to a city or metro area — because IP address blocks are allocated to ISPs by region. It does not reveal your exact street address, your name, or other personal details on its own; that level of detail would require your ISP's subscriber records, which aren't publicly accessible.

Frequently asked questions

What is my IP address?

Your IP (Internet Protocol) address is the numeric label assigned to your device by your internet service provider so other computers on the internet know where to send data back to you. The address shown by a tool like this is your public IP — the one visible to websites you visit — which is usually different from the private IP address your router assigns your device on your home network.

Why does my IP address change?

Most home internet connections use "dynamic" IP addresses that your ISP can reassign periodically — when your router restarts, after a lease renewal, or simply on the ISP's schedule. Businesses and servers often pay for a "static" IP that stays fixed. Using a VPN also changes your visible public IP to the VPN server's address.

What is the difference between IPv4 and IPv6?

IPv4 addresses look like 192.0.2.1 — four numbers 0-255 separated by dots — and the entire IPv4 space (about 4.3 billion addresses) has effectively run out. IPv6 addresses look like 2001:0db8:85a3::8a2e:0370:7334 — much longer, hexadecimal, separated by colons — and provide a vastly larger address space designed to accommodate the growth of internet-connected devices.

Is my IP address the same as my location?

Not exactly. Your IP address can be used to estimate a general geographic area (often city or region-level, based on which ISP block it belongs to), but it is not a precise or reliable indicator of your exact physical address, and accuracy varies significantly by provider and region.

What is a private IP address?

A private IP address (like 192.168.1.5 or 10.0.0.12) is the address your router assigns to a device on your local network — it is not visible to the outside internet. Your router uses NAT (Network Address Translation) to map traffic between your device's private IP and your single public IP address, which is what external websites actually see.