What Is My IP Address? Public vs Private IP Explained

Key Takeaways

Your public IP address is visible to every website you visit and reveals your approximate location.
Private IPs (192.168.x.x, 10.x.x.x) stay inside your local network -- the internet never sees them.
A VPN hides your public IP, but WebRTC leaks can silently expose your real address even with a VPN active.
IPv6 is growing, but most connections still fall back to IPv4. Your device likely has both.

Your IP Address Right Now

This detects your public IP, ISP, and approximate location without storing anything. Client-side only.

Try it What Is My IP

IPv4 Address

—

Location

City—

Region—

Country—

Continent—

Postal Code—

Coordinates—

Network

ISP—

Organisation—

AS Number—

Reverse DNS—

Timezone—

Currency—

Open full tool

If the location seems wrong — showing a different city than you are in — that is normal. The explanation is below.

What Is an IP Address?

Every device on the internet needs an address so other devices know where to send data back. That address is your IP (Internet Protocol) address.

Two versions exist:

IPv4: Four numbers separated by dots, like 192.168.1.1. Supports about 4.3 billion unique addresses — ran out years ago.
IPv6: Eight groups of hex digits separated by colons, like 2001:0db8:85a3::8a2e:0370:7334. Supports 340 undecillion addresses, which should last a while.

Most devices run both simultaneously (“dual stack”). IPv4 still dominates everyday browsing.

Public vs Private IP Addresses

Your public IP is assigned by your ISP and is visible to every website you visit. Your private IP is assigned by your router and exists only inside your home network — the internet never sees it directly.

Property	Public IP	Private IP
Visibility	Visible to the entire internet	Only visible within your local network
Assigned by	Your ISP	Your router (via DHCP)
Uniqueness	Globally unique	Unique only within your network
Example ranges	Any non-reserved address	10.x.x.x, 172.16-31.x.x, 192.168.x.x
Reveals your location?	Yes, approximately	No
Changes when you...	Restart router or reconnect to ISP	Reconnect to your local network

Your public IP is assigned by your ISP to your router. Every device in your household shares it. When a website logs your IP, this is what it sees.

Your private IP is assigned by your router to each device on your home network. Invisible to the outside world. Your router uses NAT (Network Address Translation) to map private addresses to your single public IP and back.

To find your private IP: ipconfig on Windows, ip addr on Linux, or ifconfig on macOS. It will start with 192.168., 10., or 172.16-31..

How IP Geolocation Works

When a website reports your location from your IP, it is not using GPS. IP geolocation uses databases (MaxMind, IP2Location, DB-IP) that map IP ranges to geographic regions based on:

ISP registration records from Regional Internet Registries (ARIN, RIPE, APNIC)
BGP routing data
Crowdsourced corrections
Latency measurements to known server locations

Accuracy is typically city-level — sometimes the right district, sometimes a neighbouring town, almost never a street address. If the tool shows Manchester when you are in Stockport, that is expected.

Why your IP location might be wrong

Mobile networks and some ISPs route traffic through regional hubs. Your IP may geolocate to your ISP’s nearest exchange, not your actual location. VPN users see the VPN server’s location instead.

How to Hide Your IP Address

VPN (Virtual Private Network)

A VPN encrypts your traffic and routes it through a server you choose. Websites see the VPN server’s IP instead of yours. Reputable providers: Mullvad, ProtonVPN, IVPN.

A VPN does not make you anonymous. The VPN provider can see your traffic, and your browser fingerprint is still identifiable. But it hides your real IP from websites and prevents your ISP from inspecting your browsing.

Tor Browser

Routes traffic through three relays, each knowing only the previous and next hop. Stronger anonymity than a VPN, but unusably slow for everyday browsing. Good for high-privacy scenarios.

Proxy Servers

An intermediary that forwards your requests. Unlike a VPN, most proxies do not encrypt traffic — useful for bypassing geographic restrictions, not for privacy.

WebRTC Leaks: The VPN Killer

Even with a VPN active, your real IP can leak through WebRTC — a browser API for real-time communication (video calls, peer-to-peer transfers). WebRTC bypasses your VPN tunnel and makes STUN server requests that expose your actual public and private IPs.

This is not theoretical. Most browsers have WebRTC enabled by default. The leak happens silently — no warning, no notification. For the full technical explanation of how WebRTC bypasses VPN tunnels, see WebRTC leaks and how to fix them.

Check for WebRTC leaks

If you use a VPN, test for WebRTC leaks. A leak means websites can discover your real IP despite the VPN. Use our WebRTC Leak Checker to verify.

WebRTC Leak Checker

Test whether WebRTC exposes your real IP address behind a VPN — detects local and public IP leaks.

Try it free

To fix WebRTC leaks:

Firefox: Go to about:config, set media.peerconnection.enabled to false. This disables WebRTC entirely (breaks browser-based video calls).
Chrome/Edge: Install a WebRTC-blocking extension, or use a VPN client with built-in WebRTC leak protection.
Brave: Ships with WebRTC leak protection enabled by default.

DNS and Your IP Trail

When you type a domain name, a DNS query translates it to an IP address. By default, those queries go to your ISP’s DNS servers — meaning your ISP sees every domain you visit, even over HTTPS.

Switch to a privacy-focused DNS resolver: Cloudflare (1.1.1.1), Quad9 (9.9.9.9), or NextDNS. If you use a VPN, make sure DNS queries route through the VPN tunnel and do not leak to your ISP’s resolver.

Use our DNS Lookup tool to inspect DNS resolution for any domain.

What to Do Next

Your IP address is one of the most basic pieces of information you share online. Now you know what it reveals, what it does not, and how to control it. Use the tools above to check your exposure, test for leaks, and verify your privacy setup actually works. To go deeper on exactly what websites learn from your IP and browser, that guide covers the full data profile a standard HTTP connection exposes. If you’re investigating a domain, WHOIS lookup shows domain ownership and registration details.