What is a public IP address?

A public IP address is the address your internet provider assigns to your connection. Every website you visit sees this address, because it is where responses to your requests are delivered. It identifies your connection on the public internet, not you personally, and it is usually shared by every device on your home or office network.

A private IP address is different. Addresses such as 192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.x are used inside your local network and are never visible to websites. Your router translates between the two, a process called network address translation.

IPv4 vs IPv6

IPv4 addresses look like 203.0.113.10, four numbers separated by dots. The world ran out of new IPv4 addresses years ago, so providers often place many customers behind one shared address. IPv6 is the newer format, written in hexadecimal such as 2001:db8::1, with a vastly larger address space. Many connections today use both, and the address a website sees depends on which protocol your connection prefers.

Why your IP address can change

Most home and mobile connections receive a dynamic address that can change when the router reconnects, when the provider rebalances its network, or simply over time. Business connections sometimes pay for a static address that stays the same. VPNs and proxy services deliberately replace your real address with one of their own, which is why the address shown here may belong to a VPN provider rather than your internet provider.

The limits of IP geolocation

Databases that map IP addresses to locations are approximate. They typically identify the city or region where the provider registers the address block, which can be far from the actual user, and they are often wrong for mobile and corporate networks. An IP location is an investigative lead, never proof of where a person is, and it must never be presented as a precise physical address.

Privacy

This tool reads the address your connection already presents to every website. It requires no account, sets no cookies and stores no history linking you to your address. For network ownership, provider and registration details of any IP address, use the IP lookup tool.