Frequently Asked Questions

An IP (Internet Protocol) address is a unique numerical label assigned to every device connected to a network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. It serves two fundamental purposes: identification (which device is this?) and location (where is this device on the network?).

Think of it like a postal address for your device. Just as a letter needs a destination address to be delivered, every packet of data sent over the internet needs a destination IP address so routers know where to forward it.

There are two versions in active use today: IPv4 (e.g., 203.0.113.45) and IPv6 (e.g., 2001:db8::1). Your device may have both simultaneously — a local (private) IP assigned by your router, and a public IP assigned by your Internet Service Provider (ISP) that the rest of the internet sees.

IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses written as four decimal numbers separated by dots (e.g., 192.168.1.1). The total address space is 2³² = approximately 4.3 billion unique addresses. While that sounds large, the rapid growth of the internet, smartphones, and IoT devices exhausted the available IPv4 pool — IANA distributed its last blocks to regional registries in 2011.

IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses written in hexadecimal groups separated by colons (e.g., 2001:0db8:85a3::8a2e:0370:7334). The total address space is 2¹²⁸ — roughly 340 undecillion addresses, enough to give every atom on Earth its own IP address many times over. IPv6 also improves routing efficiency, built-in security (IPsec), and eliminates the need for NAT in most cases.

Most modern networks support both (called "dual stack"), but IPv4 still carries the majority of internet traffic because transitioning billions of devices and systems takes time. If you see an address starting with "2001:", "2600:", or similar, it's IPv6.

IP geolocation accuracy varies by level of detail:

• Country level: 99%+ accurate for nearly all IP addresses. Knowing which country an IP belongs to is very reliable.
• Region/State level: 80–90% accurate for most residential and business IPs.
• City level: 60–80% accurate for residential IPs. The result reflects the city where the ISP's infrastructure is located, which may be tens of kilometers from the actual user.

Accuracy is significantly lower in these cases:

• Mobile IPs: Carriers route traffic through regional gateways, so the IP might show a state capital even if you're in a rural area.
• VPN/Proxy users: The IP resolves to the VPN server's location, not the real user's location — which is exactly why people use VPNs.
• Satellite internet: Services like Starlink use IPs registered to their ground station locations.
• Corporate networks: Traffic may exit through headquarters even if the user is at a remote office.

IP geolocation should never be used as a precise location tracker — it is a network-level approximation, not GPS.

No. We do not log or permanently store the IP addresses or domain names you look up. All queries are forwarded in real-time to our data providers (IP2Location.io for IP lookups, ip2whois.com for WHOIS data), the result is returned to your browser, and nothing is retained on our servers afterward.

We do use Google AdSense to display advertisements, and Google may collect anonymized browsing data for ad personalization purposes as described in Google's Privacy Policy. You can opt out of personalized ads at Google Ads Settings. See our Privacy Policy for full details.

A WHOIS lookup retrieves the publicly registered information about a domain name. Depending on the registrar's privacy settings and the registrant's country (GDPR affects EU registrants), you may see:

• Registrar: The company where the domain was purchased
• Domain Status: ICANN status codes (e.g., clientTransferProhibited, active, pendingDelete)
• Creation Date: When the domain was first registered
• Expiry Date: When the registration expires if not renewed
• Nameservers: The DNS servers controlling where the domain's traffic goes
• Registrant Contact: Name, organization, address, phone, and email of the domain owner — often redacted by privacy services

Note: Since GDPR took effect in 2018, many European domain owners have their personal details replaced with privacy proxy information. For .com and .net domains, ICANN's policy requires some minimum data to be publicly available even with privacy protection enabled.

There are several reasons why an IP address lookup might return limited or no data:

• Private/Reserved ranges: Addresses like 192.168.x.x, 10.x.x.x, and 172.16–31.x.x are defined by RFC 1918 for use inside private networks and are never routed on the public internet. They have no public geolocation data.
• Special-purpose addresses: Ranges like 127.0.0.1 (localhost), 169.254.x.x (link-local), and 0.0.0.0 are reserved for specific technical functions.
• Newly allocated IPs: When IANA allocates a new IP block to a regional registry, geolocation databases may not yet have accurate data for it.
• Sparse allocation: Some organizations that received large IP allocations decades ago have minimal location data in the WHOIS registry.
• IPv6 adoption: IPv6 coverage in geolocation databases is still less complete than IPv4, so some IPv6 addresses return only country-level data.

Yes, all tools on ShowMyIP.xyz are completely free to use with no account or registration required. We fund the service through Google AdSense advertising — unobtrusive ads displayed on our pages allow us to cover server and API costs while keeping the tools free for everyone.

There are no rate limits for casual use. If you need to perform thousands of automated lookups, you should use the IP2Location.io API directly, which offers both free and paid tiers depending on volume.

ShowMyIP.xyz does not offer a public API. Our website is powered by the IP2Location.io API and IP2WHOIS API. If you need programmatic access to IP geolocation or WHOIS data for your own application, we recommend signing up directly with these providers — they offer generous free tiers (up to 30,000 queries/month on the free plan) and well-documented REST APIs with libraries for most programming languages.

A hosted domains lookup (also called a reverse IP lookup) finds all domain names currently pointed at a specific IP address. When you type a domain into your browser, DNS resolves it to an IP. Reverse IP lookup does the opposite: given an IP, it returns all domains that resolve to it.

This is possible because DNS records are not secret — any domain owner publishing an A or CNAME record for an IP is publicly declaring "this domain lives at that IP." Services like ours crawl and index those declarations continuously, building a map of IP-to-domain relationships.

Common uses include: checking whether your shared hosting server has spammy neighbors that could hurt your email deliverability, investigating phishing infrastructure, or finding all web properties controlled by an organization.

Data freshness depends on the type of information:

• IP Geolocation: The IP2Location database is updated monthly with corrections from ISPs, routing data, and user reports. Real-time changes (like a VPN changing exit nodes) may take days to weeks to reflect.
• WHOIS data: Domain WHOIS records update within minutes of a change at the registrar (registration, renewal, nameserver update). Our tool queries the WHOIS database live, so results reflect the current state.
• Hosted Domains: The reverse IP index is crawled and updated periodically. Very recently registered or deleted domains may lag by a few days.