What Is a Public IP Address?
A public IP address is an IP address that is globally unique and routable on the internet. It is assigned to your router by your ISP and is the address that websites, services, and other internet hosts see when you connect to them. Use our IP checker to see your current public IP, or look up any public IP to see what information it reveals.
How Public IPs Are Allocated
| Organization | Role | Region |
|---|---|---|
| IANA | Internet Assigned Numbers Authority - Manages the global IP address space | Global |
| ARIN | American Registry for Internet Numbers | North America |
| RIPE NCC | Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre | Europe, Middle East, Central Asia |
| APNIC | Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre | Asia-Pacific |
| LACNIC | Latin America and Caribbean Network Information Centre | Latin America |
| AFRINIC | African Network Information Centre | Africa |
| ISP | Receives blocks from RIRs and assigns individual IPs to customers | Local |
What Your Public IP Reveals
| Information | Accuracy | Who Can See It |
|---|---|---|
| Country | 99%+ | Any website or service you connect to |
| ISP / Organization name | Very high | Any website, via WHOIS/RDAP |
| City (approximate) | 50–80%% | Any website using geolocation databases |
| ASN (network identifier) | Very high | Any website or service |
| Your name / home address | Not revealed | Only your ISP (requires legal process) |
Protecting Your Public IP
- Use a VPN to replace your public IP with the VPN server's IP for all outbound connections - Then run a VPN leak test to confirm it's working.
- Avoid sharing your public IP in gaming chats, forums, or video streams - Screen share sessions can reveal it. Read what someone can do with your IP.
- Enable your router's SPI firewall to block unsolicited inbound connection attempts to your public IP.
- Check if your IP is on any email blacklists or flagged as a proxy or VPN exit node - This affects deliverability and access.
Static, Dynamic, and Shared Public IPs
Dynamic by default
Most residential connections receive a dynamic public IP: the ISP assigns an address from its pool via DHCP, and it can change after a modem reboot or lease expiry. Businesses and self-hosters often pay for a static public IP that never changes, which makes inbound services (mail servers, VPN endpoints, remote access) practical.
CGNAT: when you don't get your own public IP at all
Because IPv4 addresses are scarce, many ISPs - Especially mobile carriers - Now place customers behind Carrier-Grade NAT (CGNAT, RFC 6598). Your router gets an address from the special 100.64.0.0/10 range, and hundreds of customers share one true public IP. You can detect this: if the WAN IP shown in your router's admin panel differs from the IP reported by our IP checker, you are behind CGNAT. Port forwarding and direct inbound connections generally do not work in that situation.
How to Check Your Public IP From the Command Line
| Step | Action |
|---|---|
| 1 | Open a terminal - Command Prompt or PowerShell on Windows, Terminal on macOS/Linux |
| 2 | Run curl https://api.ipify.org - The response is your current public IPv4 address |
| 3 | For IPv6, run curl https://api64.ipify.org - If your network has IPv6, you'll see a long hexadecimal address |
| 4 | Compare the result with your router's reported WAN address to detect CGNAT, and with our IP lookup tool to see the geolocation and ASN data attached to it |
Your public IP may also have a hostname attached to it - A reverse DNS lookup reveals it. ISP-assigned hostnames often encode the region and connection type (e.g. cpe-203-0-113-5.nsw.bigpond.net.au), which is one more way servers infer where and what kind of connection you are using. Mail servers in particular check reverse DNS before accepting email from an IP.
What This Means for You
Your public IP is the single most persistent identifier you carry around the web that you did not choose. Every site you visit logs it, every email you send from a local client embeds it in headers, and geolocation databases map it to your city with reasonable accuracy. None of that reveals your name - Only your ISP can connect an IP to a subscriber, and only under legal process - But it does enable cross-site correlation and regional content decisions. If that matters to you, a VPN swaps your public IP for a shared one; if it doesn't, the sensible baseline is simply not to publish your IP in public places and to keep your router's firewall enabled.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I find out what my public IP address is?
Visit the WhatsMyIP.now homepage - The IP shown there is exactly what every other website sees when you connect. From a terminal, curl https://api.ipify.org returns the same answer. Your device's own settings show only your private LAN address, not your public one.
Does my public IP change when I restart my router?
Sometimes. On dynamic-IP connections the ISP may issue a new address after the DHCP lease lapses, which a long power-off can encourage - But many ISPs re-issue the same IP for weeks. Static-IP plans never change, and CGNAT customers share rotating addresses they cannot control.
Can someone find my home address from my public IP?
No. IP geolocation resolves to a city or region at best, and often only to your ISP's nearest hub. The mapping between an IP and a subscriber's street address is held only by the ISP and released only through legal process such as a court order.