IP location: how to find where an IP address is

An IP location is an estimate of where a connection is, derived from the registry and routing data for the address block — not from measuring the device. That makes the country reliable, the region and city usually right, and a street address impossible. If you are looking up your own connection, the answers to expect are: country almost always, city most of the time, and the city of your ISP's regional equipment rather than your home.

Look one up

How accurate it is, by granularity

• Country — high confidence. Assignments are registered per economy and routing follows them. Errors exist but are rare, and they are usually a whole block being moved rather than one address being misread.
• Region — good. Regional registrations are usually accurate, though large ISPs often register every address to the region that holds their equipment.
• City — statistical, not a fix. Providers map addresses to cities from registry records, latency measurements and commercial data. For consumer broadband this lands in the right metropolitan area most of the time; for mobile, corporate and VPN ranges it is regularly the wrong city or the carrier's headquarters.
• District — only where we have it. IP99 returns a district for addresses in China, because its place-name data covers that country down to the county level. Elsewhere region and city are the finest granularity, and a name the database does not hold is left out rather than guessed.

Why a location can be wrong

• The address belongs to a network, not a place. A block can be registered in one city and used in another; the lookup reports the registration.
• VPN, proxy and Tor. The lookup describes the exit, so it reports where the exit is. That is the honest answer to "where does this address appear to be", and the wrong answer to "where is the user".
• Mobile and carrier NAT. One address serves subscribers across a whole region, so any city attached to it is representative at best.
• Corporate and satellite links. Traffic can be routed through a headquarters or a ground station in a different city or country from the people using it.
• Datacenter addresses. A server's address says where the server is, which is rarely where its users are.

Field by field

• geo.country — ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code, e.g. US.
• geo.region, geo.city — Latin place names, returned for addresses in every country.
• geo.district — present for addresses in China only.
• geo.subdivision, geo.admin_code — ISO 3166-2 and the Chinese GB/T 2260 six-digit code, also on Chinese addresses.
• geo.lat, geo.lon — coordinates of the block, not of a device.
• geo.tz — the time zone the address is expected to be in.

An address in China carries the names and both codes together, for example GET /v1/ip/27.22.66.200: "region": "Hubei", "city": "Xiangyang", "district": "Xiangcheng", "subdivision": "CN-HB", "admin_code": "420602".

When the location looks wrong

1. Check for a VPN or proxy first. It is the most common cause by a wide margin, and the fix is not in the database.
2. Compare the time zone, not just the city. geo.tz being wrong as well suggests a genuinely stale record; a wrong city with a correct time zone usually means "registered in the capital, used elsewhere".
3. Check the network type. network.usage_type of MOB or GTW means the address is shared and its city is approximate by construction.
4. Then treat it as an estimate. Use city-level location to pick a language, a currency or a legal region — not to decide that a specific person is in a specific place.

FAQ

How do I find the location of an IP address?

Look the address up: GET https://ip99.com/v1/ip/{ip} returns geo with country, region, city, latitude, longitude and time zone, free and without a key. Call GET https://ip99.com/v1/ip with no address to locate the connection you are calling from.

How accurate is IP geolocation?

Country-level is reliable, region and city are usually right for consumer addresses, and it is not precise enough to treat as a device location. Mobile, corporate, VPN and satellite addresses are the regular exceptions, and datacenter addresses describe the server rather than its users.

Why does my IP show the wrong city?

Usually because the address belongs to a network rather than a place: the block is registered where the ISP holds its equipment. A VPN or proxy will also show the exit's city by design. Mobile and carrier-NAT addresses are shared across a region, so no single city is correct.

Can IP geolocation find a street address?

No. The data comes from registry and routing records plus statistical mapping, which resolves to a network block. There is no mechanism in it for resolving a building, and a service claiming otherwise is not being straight with you.

Does IP location work for IPv6?

Yes. IPv6 addresses are looked up on the same endpoint and return the same geo fields. Coverage depends on the registrations for that prefix, so a newly allocated range may resolve only to a country.

Is IP geolocation legal to use?

Looking up an address is ordinary network data, and using a coarse location to select a language, currency or legal region is routine. Treating it as the location of a person, or as evidence about an individual, is where legal and ethical problems start — because the address is a connection and often shared.

Related: What is my IP address? · IP address lookup: what you can and cannot find out · How to detect a proxy, VPN or datacenter IP · Rotating residential proxies and dial-up pools · Residential proxy vs datacenter proxy · Is this IP a VPN? · What an IP risk score means · How fresh should IP risk evidence be? · What is an ASN? · Free IP geolocation and risk API · Proxy exit addresses captured this week · IP risk profile · IP ranges by country · IP ranges by ASN.