What's My IP Address?

How it works

When the page loads, your browser asks our server (running on Cloudflare) for the details of the connection it just made, and the page shows them.

• IP address: the source address of your request as Cloudflare received it. This is your network’s public address, not the private address of your device.
• IP version: IPv4 if the address is four numbers separated by dots, IPv6 if it is hexadecimal groups separated by colons.
• ISP or network and ASN: the organization that announces the address block on the internet, and its autonomous system number (ASN). For home and office connections this is usually the internet provider; behind a VPN it is the VPN’s hosting network.
• Approximate location and time zone: from Cloudflare’s IP geolocation data. See “Why the location is approximate” below.
• Reverse DNS (PTR): the host name, if any, that the owner of the address block has published for it. Many addresses have none.
• Cloudflare data center: the airport code of the Cloudflare location that handled your request, usually one near you or your provider’s network.

The page shows one address: the one your browser used for this request. It doesn’t test whether your network also has working IPv6 or IPv4.

Worked example

Say the result reads:

• Your public IPv4 address is 203.0.113.45
• ISP or network: Example Fiber, autonomous system AS64500
• Approximate location: San Jose, California, United States, time zone America/Los_Angeles
• Reverse DNS (PTR): host-45.example.net
• Cloudflare data center: SJC

This network reaches the internet over IPv4 through Example Fiber. The reverse DNS name follows a pattern providers often use for customer addresses. The city is where the address block appears in geolocation data, which may be the provider’s hub rather than the office. If the office needs a fixed address for firewall allowlists or a VPN, ask the provider whether 203.0.113.45 is static. (The addresses, ASN and names here come from ranges reserved for documentation.)

What is a public IP address?

An IP address identifies a connection point on a network. A public address is routable on the internet and unique at any moment: servers send replies to it. Internet providers get public addresses from regional internet registries and assign them to customers.

Private addresses (10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12 and 192.168.0.0/16 for IPv4, set out in RFC 1918) are reused inside millions of networks and never appear on the internet. Your router connects the two.

IPv4 and IPv6

IPv4 addresses are 32 bits long, written as four numbers from 0 to 255 such as 203.0.113.45, which allows about 4.3 billion addresses. The registries have run out of new IPv4 space, so blocks are now transferred or leased between organizations.

IPv6 addresses are 128 bits long, written as eight groups of hexadecimal digits such as 2001:db8::1 (runs of zeros are shortened to ::). There are enough for every device to have its own public address, so IPv6 networks usually don’t need address translation. Many networks run both (dual stack).

Why the location is approximate

An IP address carries no location. Geolocation databases estimate one from registry records, provider data and network measurements, and update as blocks move. The result is often right about the country, less often about the city, and can point to the provider’s data center or the registered address of the block. It is never your street address.

NAT and carrier-grade NAT

Network address translation (NAT) lets many devices share one public IPv4 address: the router rewrites each outgoing connection’s source address and keeps track of replies. Some providers, mostly mobile and some fixed wireless and broadband networks, add a second layer called carrier-grade NAT (CGNAT), so many customers share one public address. Those networks often hand customer routers an address from the shared range 100.64.0.0/10 (RFC 6598).

If your router’s WAN (internet) address differs from the public IP shown here, another layer of NAT sits upstream: CGNAT if the WAN address is in 100.64.0.0/10, or a second router or the provider’s modem if it is a private address. That matters for hosting services, port forwarding and site-to-site VPNs, which need a public address that is yours alone.

VPNs, proxies and private relays

A VPN, proxy or privacy relay (such as iCloud Private Relay) sends your traffic through its own servers, so websites, including this one, see the service’s address, network and location instead of yours. Corporate networks that route all internet traffic through a central firewall or a cloud security service show that site’s address. Disconnect the VPN or check from another network to see the address your provider assigned.