What is my IP address?

The short answer

Your public IP address is the network address that servers on the internet see when your device connects to them. The homepage of this site shows it at the top the moment the page loads.

It is assigned by whoever connects you to the internet: your home broadband provider, your mobile carrier, your employer's network, a VPN, or a proxy. It is not a property of your device. Move the same laptop to a coffee shop and its public IP changes.

Public IP vs local IP

Most devices also have a local (private) address such as 192.168.1.23 or 10.0.0.5. Those are only meaningful inside your home or office network. Your router translates between the private addresses of every device in the house and one shared public address, a process called NAT.

That is why every phone and laptop on the same Wi-Fi usually shows the same public IP.

IPv4 and IPv6

IPv4 addresses look like 203.0.113.42. IPv6 addresses look like 2001:db8:85a3::8a2e:370:7334. Many connections support both, and which one a website sees depends on whether that site is reachable over IPv6 and how your operating system prefers to connect.

What an IP address reveals

An IP address maps to a network operator (the ISP or hosting company), an autonomous system number (ASN), and an approximate location, typically a city or region. It does not reveal your street address, name or account details; only your provider can connect an IP to a subscriber.

Location databases are estimates. They can be off by tens or hundreds of kilometres, especially for mobile networks, which often route traffic through a regional gateway.

Why your IP changes

Residential ISPs commonly assign dynamic addresses that change after a router restart or a lease expiry. Mobile carriers frequently put many subscribers behind a shared address (carrier-grade NAT) and rotate it. VPNs and proxies replace your IP entirely with one of theirs.