How to Check Your IP Address: IPv4, IPv6 and Terminal

A practical IP check guide: the instant browser check, a fast IP check from the terminal with curl or PowerShell, IPv6 checks, time signals and leak tests.

An IP check answers one question: which public address does the rest of the Internet see when this device connects? IPRapid reports that address for IPv4 and IPv6 separately, adds the network facts attached to it, and offers the same result in a browser and in a terminal. This guide walks through each method and explains what the result can and cannot tell you.

Instant IP check in the browser

Open iprapid.com. The public IP address is already rendered in the first HTML response, so there is nothing to click and no account to create. Alongside it you get the country, region and city associated with the address, approximate coordinates with an accuracy radius, the timezone, the ISP or network organization, and the ASN announcing the prefix.

To check an address other than your own, type it into the lookup field. Both IPv4 (for example 8.8.8.8) and IPv6 (for example 2001:4860:4860::8888) are accepted.

Fast IP check from the terminal

A terminal IP check is often quicker than opening a browser, and it is the only practical option on a server, in a container or over SSH. Every browser result has a command-line equivalent:

  • curl iprapid.com — a JSON summary of the current connection.
  • curl iprapid.com/ip — the bare IP address and a single newline, ready to pipe into another command.
  • curl iprapid.com/info — the full plain-text report with stable labels and field order; curl iprapid.com/ansi returns the same report in color.
  • curl iprapid.com/field/country-code — one allowlisted value, for scripts that need exactly one field.
  • curl -4 iprapid.com and curl -6 iprapid.com — force the request over IPv4 or IPv6 to check one address family at a time.
  • irm iprapid.com — the PowerShell equivalent on Windows.

The endpoints need no API key. Responses carry rate-limit headers so an automated IP check can back off politely.

IPv6 check and dual-stack readiness

An IPv6 check is not simply "does an IPv6 address exist". IPRapid queries IPv4-only and IPv6-only first-party endpoints separately and times each attempt in milliseconds, so a working dual stack, a broken IPv6 path and an unmeasurable one remain three different answers. A blocked, filtered or unconfigured probe is reported as unknown rather than as a failed IPv6 test, because an absent measurement is not evidence that IPv6 is missing.

A large IPv6 response is also fetched as a path-MTU signal, which is where IPv6 problems usually hide: small requests succeed while larger transfers stall.

Time, timezone and response-time signals

Several values in an IP check are about time rather than location. The timezone and UTC offset are inferred from the IP geolocation dataset, and your browser reports its own timezone independently — a mismatch between the two is the classic sign that traffic is leaving through a VPN or proxy in another region, though a traveller or a manually configured clock produces the same signal.

Each result also carries the UTC timestamp of the observation itself, so a copied or shared report can never be mistaken for a live one, and the connectivity tests report how many milliseconds each probe took. Diagnostic share links expire after 24 hours and contain only redacted status values.

DNS and WebRTC leak tests

The leak tests compare the public address used by this page with the addresses WebRTC exposes through STUN, and with the resolver exits observed by an authoritative DNS challenge. Matching values are not proof that no VPN or proxy is in use — split tunnelling, multiple interfaces and carrier routing all produce honest-looking results — and a test that could not run is never presented as a pass.

How accurate is an IP location?

IP geolocation describes a network allocation, not a device or a household. The city shown may be the location of a regional gateway hundreds of kilometres away, which is why every result carries an accuracy radius. Treat it as an uncertainty boundary, not a margin of error around a known point, and never as a street address.

Method notes, the full endpoint table, rate-limit behaviour and privacy handling are documented in the API and methodology reference.