What is my IP address — and what does it reveal about my location?

Your IP address is the number your internet provider assigns to your connection. It's visible to every website you visit, and it carries a rough indication of where you are in the world — but it is not GPS, and what it reveals might surprise you. Here's exactly what your IP address is, what location information it contains, and how it differs from your actual device position.

What is an IP address?

An IP address (Internet Protocol address) is a numerical label assigned to your device by your internet provider when you connect to the internet. It looks like 203.0.113.47 for IPv4, or a longer string like 2001:db8::1 for the newer IPv6 format. Think of it like a return address on an envelope: it tells the internet where to send the response when you request a web page, a video, or any other data.

There are two kinds you'll encounter:

• Public IP — the address the rest of the internet sees. This is what's shown when a site says "your IP is…". It belongs to your router (or your mobile carrier's network), not directly to your phone or laptop.
• Private IP — the address your router assigns to each device on your home network (like 192.168.1.5). The wider internet never sees this directly.

You can see your current public IP address — along with an approximate location derived from it — on the My Location homepage, which shows it automatically alongside your IP-based city, region, and time zone.

What does your IP address reveal about your location?

Internet providers are assigned blocks of IP addresses for specific geographic regions. A database called a GeoIP database maps those blocks to approximate locations. When a website looks up your IP, it consults one of these databases and gets back something like:

• Country — very reliable (99%+ accuracy for major providers)
• Region or state — reliable for most ISPs
• City — generally accurate to within 25–50 km, but often wrong for rural areas or mobile connections
• Postal code — rough at best

What it cannot reveal is your street address, your building, your floor, or anything close to the precision of GPS. The city shown may be the nearest exchange or data center your ISP routes through, not the city you're actually in.

The difference between IP location and GPS location

This is the most important distinction to understand. Your IP location is a database lookup — fast, always available, no permission needed, but approximate. Your GPS location comes from your device's hardware and is precise to within a few meters.

On the My Location homepage, you see both: the IP-based location loads immediately (no permission required), and you can tap Use precise location to upgrade to the GPS fix — which triggers the standard browser location permission. If you want to understand exactly how that GPS fix is calculated, how accurate phone GPS really is goes deep on the hardware and accuracy differences.

A few situations where the IP location can be surprisingly wrong:

• Mobile data — your carrier may route all traffic through a central gateway in a city far from you, so the IP maps to that city.
• VPN — if you're using a VPN, your public IP is the VPN server's IP, which can be anywhere in the world.
• Satellite internet — providers like Starlink often show a location near a ground station, not your actual position.
• Corporate networks — company proxies can make everyone's traffic appear to come from the head office.

Does your IP address change?

Most home and mobile connections are assigned a dynamic IP — one that can change each time you reconnect, or periodically as your provider rotates addresses. Some business connections and premium plans get a static IP that stays fixed. Either way, the IP you see right now is the one associated with your current connection, and it can be different tomorrow.

Can websites track you by IP address?

Your IP address is sent with every request you make to a server, so yes, websites can log it. In practice, an IP address alone is a weak identifier — it often represents an entire household or office, it changes over time, and it typically reveals only your city, not your identity. That said, your IP combined with other signals (browser fingerprint, cookies, timing) can be used for tracking, which is one reason privacy tools like VPNs exist.

My Location does not log your IP address for tracking purposes. The location shown on the homepage is derived from the request your browser makes to our API and is never tied to an account or stored history.

Ready to see your IP address and location?

The fastest way to see your current public IP, your approximate IP-based location, and — if you choose — your precise GPS coordinates, is to open the My Location homepage. No sign-up, no download, and the IP information appears immediately without any permission prompt.