What Is My IP Address?

Your IP address is the identifier your device uses to send and receive data online. The checker above shows your current public IP, along with what your connection reveals about your approximate location and internet provider — and what it does not reveal. Below, we cover how IP addresses work, what they can and can’t expose about you, and how VPNs actually change what websites see.

People usually land on a page like this one for a specific reason: troubleshooting a network or gaming connection issue that asks for your IP, double-checking whether a VPN is actually working, or simply wondering how much a website can tell about them from a connection alone. Whatever brought you here, the tool above gives you the same real-time answer a website would get the moment you visit it — nothing hidden, nothing simulated.

Your Privacy on This Page

Before you scroll further, here is exactly what this page does and does not do with your IP address:

• The checker fetches your IP and approximate location directly from your browser to a third-party geolocation provider — Etemora’s own servers never see or log this request.
• We do not store, save, or build a permanent database of visitor IP addresses, ISPs, or locations anywhere on this page.
• We do not send your IP address, ISP name, or city to Google Analytics, any advertising pixel, or any form on this site. Button clicks are tracked only as generic, anonymous event names (for example, that someone clicked “Copy IP”), with no personal data attached.
• Your IP address is never shown to, or shared with, any other visitor of this page.

In short: this tool works the same way any website you visit already works — it can see your IP the moment you load the page — but unlike a typical site, it doesn’t keep a record of it.

What Is an IP Address?

Both IPv4 and IPv6 address space are allocated in blocks by IANA, the organization responsible for global IP address coordination, before reaching your ISP. Learn more.

An IP (Internet Protocol) address is a numeric label assigned to every device connected to a network. It works like a return address on a letter: when your device requests a webpage, it tells the server where to send the response. Every device on the internet needs one, whether it’s a phone on mobile data, a laptop on office Wi-Fi, or a smart TV at home.

Your public IP address is the one assigned by your internet service provider (ISP) and visible to the websites and services you connect to — it’s the address shown in the checker above. This is different from the private IP address your router assigns to devices inside your home network, which the outside world never sees directly.

Public vs Private IP Addresses

Most home and office networks use two layers of addressing:

• Public IP: assigned by your ISP, visible to the wider internet. This is the address a website sees when you visit it, and the one displayed by the checker on this page.
• Private IP: assigned by your router to each device inside your local network (phone, laptop, smart TV). Private IPs are not routable on the public internet, so no outside server can see or contact them directly.

Want the full breakdown of how these two address types actually behave — including NAT, Wi-Fi examples, and which one a VPN changes? See Public IP vs Private IP: What’s the Difference? for the complete comparison.

Private IP ranges are reserved by standard and never appear on the public internet:

If you check your device’s network settings and see an address starting with 192.168 or 10., that’s your private IP — not the one websites see. The checker above shows your public IP.

IPv4 vs IPv6

Global IPv6 rollout is tracked publicly via Google IPv6 statistics, which shows steady adoption as ISPs move away from IPv4. View the data.

There are two IP address formats in use today:

• IPv4 looks like four numbers separated by dots (for example, 203.0.113.42). It’s the older standard, and the pool of available IPv4 addresses has effectively run out, which is why many ISPs share addresses across multiple customers.
• IPv6 looks like a longer string of letters and numbers separated by colons (for example, 2405:201:302c:d121::1). It was designed to provide a vastly larger address space and is increasingly common on mobile and home networks.

Many connections today use IPv6, IPv4, or both at once (called dual-stack). The checker above shows whichever address type your connection returned, labeled under “Connection Type.”

What Can Someone Know From Your IP Address?

An IP address alone can reveal a limited set of information: your approximate geographic region (usually city or metro-area level, sometimes only country or state level), your internet service provider or hosting network, and the organization the IP block is registered to. This comes from public IP-geolocation and network-registry databases, not from anything transmitted by your device beyond the address itself.

An IP address does not directly reveal your name, your exact street address, your phone number, or anything else that could identify you personally. Linking an IP to a real identity generally requires additional information that only your ISP holds, and in most jurisdictions ISPs only disclose that under legal process such as a court order or subpoena.

It also does not reveal what you searched for, what you typed, or what’s on your screen — the IP address itself is just a routing number. Anything beyond that (your browsing history on a specific site, for instance) comes from separate tracking methods like cookies or account logins, not the IP address itself.

Can Someone Track You Using Your IP?

An IP address can be used to see that requests are coming from the same general network or approximate region over time, which is one signal advertisers and analytics tools use alongside cookies, device fingerprints, and account logins. On its own, though, an IP address is a weak tracking signal: it changes when you switch networks, and for many home connections it changes periodically even without switching (see the next section).

Sharing your IP with a website is unavoidable — it’s required for the connection to work at all. The practical privacy question isn’t whether a site can see your IP (it always can), but what it does with that information combined with other tracking signals.

In practice, most tracking you’d actually want to avoid — being followed across different websites by ads, or having a detailed profile built of your interests — relies far more heavily on cookies, account logins, and device/browser fingerprinting than on IP addresses alone. Blocking third-party cookies and using privacy-focused browser settings typically does more for that specific concern than hiding your IP by itself, though the two approaches work well together.

Can an IP Address Reveal Your Exact Location?

The city, region, and country fields shown by the checker above come from IP-geolocation databases maintained by third-party providers. These databases map IP address ranges to approximate locations based on ISP registration records, but they are frequently off by many miles, especially on mobile networks, satellite connections, and in rural areas where ISPs route large regions through a single hub.

Does Your IP Address Change?

It depends on your connection type:

• Dynamic IP: most home and mobile connections use dynamic IPs, which your ISP can reassign periodically — when you restart your router, reconnect to mobile data, or after a lease renewal period.
• Static IP: some business connections and specific ISP plans use a static IP that stays the same until you change it, usually for an additional fee.

If you use the Refresh button above after reconnecting to a different network (like switching from Wi-Fi to mobile data), you may see a different IP address — that confirms your connection is dynamic and network-dependent.

How to Hide or Change Your IP Address

Common ways people change what IP address a website sees:

• Reconnect your router: for dynamic IP connections, power-cycling your modem/router sometimes triggers your ISP to assign a new address (not guaranteed, and it stays within your ISP’s own address pool).
• Switch networks: moving from home Wi-Fi to mobile data (or vice versa) puts you on a different ISP network with a different IP.
• Use a VPN: routes your traffic through a VPN provider’s server, so websites see the VPN server’s IP instead of yours. This is the most common and most controllable method — covered in detail below.
• Use Tor: routes traffic through multiple volunteer-run relays for stronger anonymity, at the cost of speed (see the VPN vs Tor comparison below).

Does a VPN Hide Your IP Address?

Yes — a VPN (Virtual Private Network) hides your real IP address from the websites you visit by routing your traffic through its own server first. The website you connect to sees the VPN server’s IP address, not yours.

A reputable VPN also encrypts traffic between your device and its server, which prevents your ISP or anyone on the same local network (like public Wi-Fi) from seeing which sites you visit. It does not make you completely anonymous online — the VPN provider itself can typically see your real IP and traffic passing through its servers, which is why a provider’s logging policy matters, and websites can still identify you through logins, cookies, and browser fingerprinting regardless of which IP address you connect from.

Because the VPN server is what actually connects to the website on your behalf, everyone using that same server at that moment tends to share the same visible IP address — which is also why a website you visit might show content, pricing, or language for the VPN server’s country/region rather than your own, and why choosing a server location changes what region a site thinks you’re browsing from.

VPN vs Proxy: What’s the Difference?

Not every proxy or VPN service is private by default — free or low-quality options can log activity, inject ads, or leave traffic unencrypted. The label “VPN” or “proxy” alone doesn’t guarantee privacy; the provider’s actual practices do.

VPN vs Tor

Tor (The Onion Router) routes your traffic through at least three volunteer-run relays, encrypting it in layers so no single relay knows both who you are and what you’re visiting. It’s free and provides strong anonymity properties for a single browser, but it’s noticeably slower than a VPN and some sites block Tor exit-node traffic outright. A VPN is generally faster and easier to use for everyday, device-wide privacy, but you’re trusting a single provider rather than distributing trust across independent relays. Some privacy-focused users combine both (VPN, then Tor) for specific use cases.

How to Check If Your VPN Is Working

1. Scroll up and use the IP checker above to note your IP address without the VPN connected.
2. Connect to your VPN and choose a server location.
3. Come back to this page and click Refresh IP in the checker above.
4. Confirm the IP address has changed and that the country/region shown now matches the VPN server location you chose.
5. Check the ISP/organization field — it should now show the VPN provider’s network, not your home ISP.
6. For a more complete check, also test a dedicated DNS leak test and WebRTC leak test, since those can expose your real IP even while a VPN is connected.
7. If your home country or ISP still appears after reconnecting, your VPN connection may not be active on this device or app — check your VPN app’s connection status directly.

What Is a VPN Leak?

A VPN leak happens when some of your traffic bypasses the encrypted tunnel and reveals your real IP address or browsing activity despite the VPN being connected. The most common types are DNS leaks (your DNS lookups go to your ISP’s servers instead of the VPN’s), IPv6 leaks (the VPN only tunnels IPv4 traffic while your device also has an active IPv6 address), and WebRTC leaks (a browser feature that can expose your real IP directly to a webpage, independent of the VPN). Reputable VPN providers offer built-in leak protection and dedicated leak-test pages; it’s worth checking a provider’s own documentation on this before relying on it for sensitive use.

Best VPNs for Hiding Your IP Address

These are the VPN providers Etemora has reviewed in depth in our full Best VPN Services guide. Pricing changes frequently, so we link to each provider’s current pricing page rather than quoting numbers here.

VPN Comparison at a Glance

For full reviews, pricing details, and how we compared each service, see our complete Best VPN Services in 2026 guide.

From Checking Your IP to Protecting It: A Quick Walkthrough

1. Scroll up and look at the IP address the checker found — that’s what every website you visit currently sees.
2. Check the Location and ISP fields — that’s the approximate information tied to that IP.
3. Click Show Details to see your ASN and timezone — additional network-level information visible to sites you visit.
4. Read the sections above on what this information can and can’t reveal about you.
5. If you’d rather websites not see this specific IP, connect a VPN from the comparison above.
6. Return to this page and click Refresh IP to confirm your IP address has changed.
7. Bookmark this page — it’s a fast way to confirm your VPN is actually active before doing anything sensitive on public Wi-Fi.
8. If you skip a VPN, at minimum use HTTPS sites and avoid entering sensitive information on unfamiliar public networks.

Test Your VPN

You can reuse the exact checker at the top of this page any time you want to confirm a VPN connection is active: connect your VPN, then click Refresh IP in the tool above. If the IP address, location, and ISP all change to match your chosen VPN server, your VPN is actively routing your traffic. If they stay the same as your normal connection, the VPN app may not be connected on this device.

What Can Your ISP See?

Your internet service provider assigns your public IP address and can see which websites and services you connect to (by domain, even on encrypted HTTPS connections) and how much data you use, because all your traffic passes through their network by definition. A VPN encrypts this traffic before it leaves your device, which prevents your ISP from seeing which specific sites you visit — though it can still see that you’re connected to a VPN server.

What your ISP generally cannot see, even without a VPN, is the specific content of encrypted (HTTPS) pages — your messages, passwords, or the exact page you’re reading within a site — because that content is encrypted end-to-end between your browser and the site itself. Your ISP mainly sees which domains you connect to and roughly when, not what you did there.

Can Websites See My IP Address?

Yes — any website you visit necessarily sees the IP address making the request, because that’s how the server knows where to send its response. This is true regardless of privacy settings in your browser; it’s a basic requirement of how the internet routes traffic. What changes is which IP address they see: your real one, or a VPN/proxy server’s, depending on how you’re connected.

Is an IP Address Personal Information?

Whether an IP address counts as personal information depends on the jurisdiction and its specific privacy law. Some data protection frameworks treat IP addresses as personal data because they can potentially be linked back to an individual (typically only by the ISP, and typically only with legal process); others apply a narrower definition, or apply different rules depending on context. This distinction shows up differently across regions and specific statutes, and can also depend on whether the IP is static or dynamic, and who is doing the processing.

This is a legal classification question, and Etemora is not a law firm. If you need a definitive answer for your specific situation — for a business handling user data, for instance — consult a qualified attorney or your local data protection authority rather than relying on general information from this page.

How Does an IP Checker Work?

When you load this page, the tool above makes a request directly from your browser to a third-party IP-geolocation service. That service sees the request coming from your device’s real public IP (the same way any website would) and returns your IP address along with approximate location and network data from its own database. The result is displayed directly in your browser — Etemora does not store this result on our servers (see the privacy section above).

This is different from a checker that runs entirely on a server: because the lookup happens in your own browser, the request genuinely comes from your device’s real connection rather than being relayed through Etemora’s servers first. If the primary lookup provider is temporarily unavailable, the tool automatically retries with a second, independent provider so you still get a result rather than an error.

Types of IP Addresses

• Public vs private: public IPs are visible to the internet; private IPs only exist inside your local network.
• Static vs dynamic: static IPs stay fixed; dynamic IPs can change periodically, assigned from your ISP’s pool.
• IPv4 vs IPv6: two different address formats, covered above — many connections use both.
• Shared vs dedicated: covered in detail below.

Shared vs Dedicated IP

A shared IP is used by multiple customers, devices, or (with some VPNs) multiple users at once — common with home ISP connections due to IPv4 address scarcity, and with most VPN servers by design, since many users sharing one exit IP makes it harder to trace any single person’s activity. A dedicated IP is assigned to a single account or user; some VPN providers offer a dedicated IP as a paid add-on, which is useful for accessing services that block shared VPN IP ranges, at some cost to the anonymity benefit of blending in with other users.

A practical trade-off worth knowing: a shared IP (like a typical VPN server) generally offers more anonymity within a crowd, but can occasionally trigger extra verification steps on sites that see unusual traffic from a popular VPN exit address. A dedicated IP avoids that friction but is uniquely tied to you, which is a different kind of trade-off depending on what you value more for a given task.

Common Myths About IP Addresses

Editor’s Note

Frequently Asked Questions

How We Approached This Page

Before publishing this tool, we checked Etemora’s own hosting setup to confirm the most reliable way to detect a visitor’s public IP for this specific site, checked the geolocation providers powering the checker directly, and cross-checked every factual claim above (like the reserved private IP ranges and how VPNs route traffic) against how the underlying technology actually works, rather than repeating common but inaccurate claims found elsewhere. The VPN recommendations reuse the same providers covered in our dedicated VPN comparison guide, so you’re not getting a second, inconsistent opinion on this page.

Final Verdict