Six common reasons
1. Your provider sends you through a hub
Many internet providers send the traffic of a whole region through one place, often the capital or a big city. Location databases then put every customer there.
2. You are on mobile data
Phone networks share one public IP among many customers (this is called carrier-grade NAT) and send them out through a few big gateways. Your phone can show a city hundreds of kilometers away, and a different one tomorrow.
3. A VPN, proxy, work network or privacy relay
Websites see where that service's server is. iCloud Private Relay and similar relays show only your general area or your country, on purpose. A work laptop on the company network often shows the head office. Our VPN check tells you if your connection goes through one.
4. The address block moved
IP addresses are bought, sold and moved between providers and countries. Location databases catch up later. Cloudflare, whose data this site uses, updates its data several times a week; other databases may be slower.
5. Your IPv4 and IPv6 addresses point to different places
If your network has both kinds of address, each one has its own entry in the databases, and they don't always agree. A website may see either one. Our IPv6 page shows if you have both.
6. Websites use different databases
There is no single official list of where IP addresses are. Each company builds its own, so two sites can show two different cities for the same address. Cloudflare itself says it can't promise its data matches other providers.
How exact can IP location be?
For scale: MaxMind, one of the biggest location databases, says that for addresses in the United States its city guess is within 50 km about 60% of the time, farther off about 32% of the time, and has no city at all for the rest (MaxMind's accuracy page, checked November 2026). No IP database shows your street or your house.
What you can do
A website shows the wrong country or language
- Turn off your VPN or relay for that site, or pick a server in your own country.
- Look for a country or language switch on the site itself. Most big sites let you choose.
- Reload this page after a change to see what websites see now.
Your home internet shows the wrong city
- Ask your internet provider to fix it. Providers can publish the real location of their addresses in a standard file called a geofeed (RFC 8805), and the databases read it.
- Report it yourself, with your IP and your real city: Cloudflare, MaxMind and IPinfo each have a form. They check every request before they change anything.
- On mobile data a correction rarely helps, because your phone's IP changes often. Cloudflare says the same.
A service blocks you because of your location
Streaming, banking and shopping sites use IP location to decide what you may see. If they get it wrong, contact their support and tell them the IP and the place they see. The "Copy for support" button on our home page puts exactly that on your clipboard.