IP Geolocation & Validation
Look up where an IP address is and whether it's a well-formed address — leave the field blank to check your own.
How IP geolocation and validation work
IP geolocation matches an IP address against a database that maps address ranges to physical locations — country, region, city, latitude/longitude, and timezone — built by tracking which organisations and ISPs have been allocated which address blocks. It's approximate by design: country-level results are usually very reliable, but city-level results depend on how precisely the address block has been mapped, and can be thrown off entirely by VPNs, proxies, or corporate networks that route traffic through a different physical location.
The validation tab does something different — it checks whether a string is a well-formed IPv4 or IPv6 address at all, and if so, classifies its type (public, private, loopback, multicast) and CIDR class. This is useful for input validation before ever attempting a geolocation lookup, or for network tooling that needs to confirm an address is properly formatted. Leaving the IP field blank on either tab uses your own request's outbound address, which is a quick way to see what this tool returns for your own connection.
Frequently asked questions
- What does leaving the IP field blank do?
- It looks up your own outbound IP address, detected from the request itself, rather than a specific address you supply.
- Why are isp and organisation always null on the Geolocation tab?
- The free GeoLite2-City database this tool uses doesn't include ISP/organisation data — that requires MaxMind's separate, paid GeoIP2 ISP database. They're left null rather than guessed.
- What is IP geolocation?
- IP geolocation estimates the physical location of a device — country, region, city, and coordinates — based on its IP address, by matching the address against a database that maps IP ranges to known locations.
- How accurate is IP geolocation?
- Country-level accuracy is generally very high (often 95%+), but city-level accuracy is much less reliable — anywhere from roughly 50–80% depending on the region, since IP address blocks are often registered to an ISP's regional office rather than the actual end-user location.
- What is the difference between IPv4 and IPv6?
- IPv4 addresses use a 32-bit format (e.g. 8.8.8.8) and are the older, still most common standard, with a limited total address space that has been exhausted. IPv6 uses a much larger 128-bit format to support far more unique addresses, and adoption is steadily increasing as IPv4 space runs out.
- Can a VPN affect geolocation results?
- Yes — if a device connects through a VPN or proxy, the IP address seen by any geolocation lookup is the VPN server's address, not the user's actual location. This is expected behaviour, not a lookup error; it's one of the main reasons IP geolocation can't be treated as a precise location signal.
- What is an ASN?
- An Autonomous System Number (ASN) identifies a network operator — an ISP, hosting provider, or large organisation — that controls a block of IP addresses and routes traffic for them. ASNs are used in network routing (BGP) and are often referenced alongside IP geolocation for fraud detection and network analysis.
- What are common use cases for IP geolocation?
- Common uses include showing localised content or pricing, fraud and risk scoring (flagging logins from unexpected countries), compliance with region-specific regulations, basic analytics on visitor location, and CDN routing to the nearest server.