If you've ever wondered "can a website really tell what city I'm in from my IP?" the answer is: roughly, sometimes, and worse on some networks than others. Here are honest accuracy numbers backed by independent testing.

By precision level

Level	Accuracy
Country	95–99%
State / region	80–90%
Metropolitan area	70–85%
City	55–80%
Postal code / ZIP	20–50%
Street address	~0%

What hurts accuracy

• Mobile networks route everyone through carrier hubs — accuracy can drop to nationwide-only.
• Rural areas have less granular IP-to-location mapping than dense urban regions.
• VPNs and proxies give the geolocation of the server, not the user.
• Corporate networks may show the headquarters' location for an entire global workforce.
• Satellite internet (Starlink etc) often geolocates to the regional ground station.

What helps accuracy

• Wired residential broadband from a major ISP, in a major city
• The geolocation provider has fresh data (commercial DBs update weekly)
• Your IP block hasn't recently been reassigned

Coordinate accuracy is misleading

When a service returns latitude/longitude with 4 decimal places, it sounds precise — but the underlying database often just stores the centroid of the city or ISP service area. The decimal precision doesn't mean the location is precise.

Test your own

Run the IP checker and compare to your actual location. If it's within 50 miles, that's typical. If it's wildly off, see why IP location shows the wrong city.

Try it now

Curious what your IP is showing the world right now? Check your IP address & location instantly with our free tool — no signup, nothing stored. Or trace any other IP to see its geolocation, ISP, and network details.