How accurate is IP-based location in miles or kilometres?

We measured this against 2,000 locations we knew the answer to: the median error was 6.4 km and 75.3% of lookups landed within 50 km (30 miles). Country was correct 98.4% of the time. But the average error was 152.9 km, because roughly one lookup in ten misses by more than 250 km — so a typical result is close, and no individual result is dependable on its own.

Is IP location more or less accurate than GPS?

Far less accurate. GPS resolves to about 5 metres; Wi-Fi positioning to tens of metres; cell-tower triangulation to a few hundred metres to a kilometre. IP geolocation is the coarsest method of all — typically city-level — because it infers location from network registration data rather than measuring your device's position.

Why does IP location show the wrong city?

The most common causes are a VPN or proxy (you get the exit server's location), mobile carrier-grade NAT (your traffic exits through a regional hub), or an ISP that registers a whole region to one billing city. The database isn't broken — it's reporting where your IP's network is registered, which often isn't where you are.

Can a website get my exact street address from my IP?

No. An IP address maps to a network, not a household. A website can estimate your city and ISP, but it cannot derive your street address from the IP alone. Exact location only comes from GPS or the browser's Geolocation API — and both require your explicit permission.

Does IP location accuracy vary by country?

Significantly — but not along the lines most people expect. In our measurements the US (5.7 km median) and Germany (5.6 km) did well, while the UK (27.2 km), France (27.1 km) and Italy (29.1 km) were among the worst, despite being dense, wealthy markets. Accuracy tracks how a given ISP allocates and registers address space, not how developed a country's internet is: a carrier that routes a whole region through one metro hub geolocates every subscriber to that hub.

June 8, 2026 · 8 min read

How Accurate Is IP-Based Location?

How close IP geolocation really gets — measured against GPS, Wi-Fi, and cell positioning — and the practical reasons your result shows the wrong city.

IP-based location gets the country right 98.4% of the time, lands within 50 km in about three cases out of four, and never reaches your street address. The coordinates a site shows are the centre of a region or your ISP's hub — not a measured point — so the pin is an estimate that is usually close and occasionally hundreds of kilometres out. Here's how that compares to the other ways apps find you, and why your own result might look wrong.

Those figures come from our own measurements, not from estimates: we checked IP geolocation against 2,000 locations whose true coordinates were known, and published the script and raw data. That post has the full distribution, the per-country breakdown, and the method. This one is the practical "how close does it get and why is mine off" companion.

The short answer, by granularity

Level	Measured accuracy	Trust it for…
Country	98.4% correct	Content licensing, fraud checks, language defaults
Within 50 km	75.3% of lookups	Coarse analytics, regional pricing
Within 10 km	58.3% of lookups	"Near me" hints — with a margin
Postal code	Low / unreliable	Almost nothing — treat as a marketing radius
Street address	Never from IP alone	Nothing

Figures from our 2,000-location measurement. The median miss was 6.4 km — but 10.8% of lookups were off by more than 250 km, which is why none of these are safe as a single source of truth.

See your own result on the What Is My Location tool — it now shows an OpenStreetMap pin so you can judge the gap between the estimate and where you actually are.

IP location vs the other ways apps find you

This is the key thing most people miss: IP geolocation is the least precise location method by a wide margin. The browser and OS have far better options — they just require permission.

Method	How it works	Typical precision	Needs permission?
GPS	Satellite ranging on the device	~5 m	Yes
Wi-Fi positioning	Nearby Wi-Fi networks matched to a database	~20–50 m	Yes (Geolocation API)
Cell tower	Triangulation between masts	~150 m – 1 km	Yes
IP geolocation	IP range matched to a registration database	City / region (often tens of km)	No

The practical takeaway: when a site asks "Allow location access?", that's the precise path (GPS/Wi-Fi via the browser's Geolocation API). What it knows without asking — from your IP — is the coarse estimate this tool shows. If a site seems to know your exact spot, you granted the permission; your IP didn't reveal it.

Why your result looks wrong

If the city is off, it's almost always one of these — and none of them mean the lookup is broken:

You're on a VPN or proxy. You inherit the exit server's location. Connect to a London server and you "are" in London. Confirm your real exit point with the VPN Leak Test, and see how a VPN changes your IP.
You're on mobile data. Carrier-grade NAT funnels many users through a regional gateway, so you can show up a city — or a whole region — away.
Your ISP registers a wide area to one city. Smaller or rural ISPs often map an entire region to their billing or POP city.
Your IP was recently reassigned. Databases lag reality by days or weeks; a freshly allocated block may still point to the previous holder's location.
You're behind a corporate or campus network. Traffic may egress through a headquarters in another city or country entirely.

How to check your own accuracy

Open the What Is My Location tool and note the city and the map pin.
Compare it to where you actually are. Off by a few kilometres? That's normal and expected.
Off by a city or country? Run the VPN Leak Test — a VPN, proxy, or mobile gateway is the usual explanation.
Want the precise version for comparison? Any maps app using GPS will show the real difference between measured and inferred location.

When IP location is accurate enough — and when it isn't

Good enough for: fraud and bot screening, content licensing and geo-blocking, choosing a default language or currency, and coarse analytics. These only need country or region, which IP nails reliably.

Not good enough for: navigation, emergency dispatch, delivery, or anything needing your actual address. Those rely on GPS or an address you provide — never on IP alone. That gap is a feature, not a flaw: it's a large part of why browsing doesn't broadcast your doorstep to every site you visit. For the flip side — what can be inferred from your IP — read what someone can do with your IP address.

Check what your IP reveals about your location right now — including a live OpenStreetMap pin — with the What Is My Location tool. For the numbers behind every figure on this page, see our measurement of 2,000 known locations — script and raw data included — and if you rely on a VPN to control your apparent location, make sure it isn't leaking with the VPN Leak Test.