ProxyCompass Knowledge Base

IP Geolocation Databases & Checkers

An IP geolocation database associates an IP address with an estimated location: a country, region or city. A checker is the website or tool that shows you this information. The distinction matters when choosing a proxy: the country displayed on a lookup page depends on the data behind that page.

You might buy a proxy listed as Japanese, see Japan in one checker and the United States in another. The address has stayed the same, yet the answers differ. To understand that disagreement, you need to know who assigned each location and what the result describes. This is part of proxy geolocation and targeting: choosing a country and having a particular website recognize that country are separate parts of the task.

The useful question is therefore more specific than “Which checker is right?” It is whether you are comparing the same IP seen by the destination, the same kind of location information and independent sources. Those details determine what a result can tell you about the proxy. An automatic “my IP” result and a lookup of an address you entered manually may refer to different addresses.

One user sends requests to three stores through the same proxy IP. Each store checks that IP against a GeoIP database as the request arrives, before showing a product. All stores offer the product only to visitors classified as being in Japan. Stores 1 and 2 use the same GeoIP database A: Japan, product available. Store 3 uses GeoIP database B: Germany, product unavailable. This is a hypothetical example, not a verdict on the accuracy of a database.

What is the difference between a database and a checker?

A database stores records for individual addresses or address ranges. When a service looks up an IP, it finds the matching record and returns the available fields. The IP itself contains no country code or coordinates. A country name appears because the data supplier has associated that address with a location.

The checker presents that answer. It may send a request to the supplier's online service through an API, or search a database file stored on its own server. API here simply means a way for one program to request data from another. Some checkers show several suppliers side by side; others display only one result.

This creates a chain: a supplier maintains the IP data, a checker retrieves it, and you see the answer. The company operating the checker may also produce its own database, but that needs to be established from its description. A different website address alone does not mean a different source of geolocation data.

How does an IP address acquire a location?

Suppliers assess several types of information. Registration records identify address resources and the organizations responsible for them. Network operators can also report where they use their ranges. These records help explain the history of an address, including changes of operator or use after a range is leased.

Possible inputs include registration records, operator geofeeds, network measurements and information from the supplier’s own services. The supplier checks and compares the evidence before maintaining its database record. The available inputs vary by supplier.

One way to publish an operator's location information is a geofeed: a file matching IP ranges to countries, regions and cities. A database supplier can read that file and compare it with other evidence. Control of an address range establishes who can provide information about it; the receiving supplier still decides whether to accept the stated location.

Network measurements provide another view. IPinfo describes using its own network of probes to collect ping, traceroute and other measurements from different locations. Comparing observations from many points can help assess where an address is used. One ping from your laptop provides much less information: its delay also reflects the route and current network conditions.

Some suppliers also use information from the services they operate. MaxMind states that certain data submitted to its minFraud transaction-risk service helps improve its IP data products. For example, billing location can be considered alongside an IP address and other evidence. This supplies an additional clue; it does not mean that a purchase automatically sets the country of an IP.

Suppliers can reach different conclusions because they collect different evidence, assess it differently or update a record at different times. There is no central geolocation record that every database is required to copy. A recently changed network may consequently be described differently by several products.

Why can MaxMind and RIPE show different countries?

MaxMind produces geolocation data. RIPE NCC operates a regional registry of internet number resources and maintains the RIPE Database. That database records matters such as allocations, assignments and network contacts. These are different purposes, even when both results include a country name.

Information in the RIPE Database is largely maintained by network operators. Its country field can refer to different things, such as a company's head office, a server facility or an end user's location; RIPE's documentation therefore warns against using it as a reliable map from IP addresses to countries. A registration entry is useful evidence about the address resource, but it does not measure the physical position of a proxy server.

Suppose a range has a registration entry naming Japan, while MaxMind assigns its addresses to the United States. A checker displaying the RIPE entry can show Japan; a checker using MaxMind can show the United States. They may both be faithfully displaying their sources. The disagreement concerns the information being used, not necessarily a fault in the checker.

A hypothetical IP has Japan in its RIPE registration entry and the United States in MaxMind geolocation. Registration describes the address resource; geolocation estimates where the address is used. A change in one source does not automatically change the other.

Changing the registration entry does not automatically change MaxMind's assessment. MaxMind reviews corrections against several sources and explicitly allows its location result to differ from the WHOIS country. WHOIS is a way to retrieve registration records. A seller therefore needs to distinguish “Japan according to this registry” from “Japan according to this geolocation product” when describing an address.

Which databases do checkers use?

Common names include MaxMind, IPinfo, IP2Location and DB-IP. Each supplies products that a website can use without building its own geolocation database. The supplier's name is a starting point: the particular dataset, available fields and release also matter.

Supplier	Products you may encounter	What to distinguish
MaxMind	GeoIP and GeoLite databases and web services	The product, country or city data, and the release used by the checker.
IPinfo	IP location APIs and downloadable datasets	The dataset and the fields included in that service.
IP2Location	Commercial and LITE geolocation products	The edition and available location fields; IP2Proxy is a separate product family for proxy-related information.
DB-IP	Commercial databases and APIs, plus Lite datasets	The full product and its reduced Lite edition; the date of the installed data.

A free lookup can be useful, but it may use a different edition from the one installed on your destination website. A result labeled GeoLite, for example, should not be presented as proof of what every customer of MaxMind's GeoIP products receives. A paid product can also contain an incorrect record; price alone cannot settle an individual location dispute.

The file format is another separate detail. The extension .mmdb identifies a database format used by MaxMind and other suppliers, including DB-IP. Seeing that extension does not establish who produced the data. The dataset's name and description provide that information.

Why can several checkers repeat the same answer?

Imagine three checkers looking up the same IP. Two use the same dataset and return Japan. The third uses another dataset and returns Germany. You have opened three websites, but the comparison contains two sources. The repeated Japan result does not become a second independent assessment merely because it appears on another page.

The same arrangement can affect shopping results. Suppose three stores offer a product only to visitors whose IP is classified as Japanese. Two stores use the first dataset and display the offer; the third uses the second dataset and reports that the offer is unavailable in the visitor's country. This example holds the IP and the rule constant to show the effect of the data source. It does not establish which database has the correct country.

An aggregator such as IPLocation can make these differences visible by placing named suppliers side by side. It displays their results; it does not make those suppliers one database. Conversely, identical answers from two unnamed checkers do not prove that they share a source. That relationship needs to be disclosed or otherwise established.

A fair comparison also requires the same IP. Opening several automatic IP checkers through a rotating proxy can send a different address to each website, so their different countries may describe different connections. Record one IP observed in a test, then enter that exact address into each supplier's lookup where manual lookup is supported. This compares the suppliers' records for one address. It does not establish which address a later request will use. The gateway address entered in your program may also differ from the address seen by the destination.

What do the fields in an IP lookup mean?

A lookup page can display a country, city, network name, map and browser information together. These fields answer different questions and may come from different sources. The label beside a value matters as much as the value itself.

Field	Meaning
Country	The country assigned to the IP by the selected geolocation product.
Registered country	The country associated with the network registration; it can differ from the geographic assignment.
Region or city	A more detailed location estimate, subject to the product’s definitions and coverage.
Coordinates and accuracy radius	An estimated location and, where supplied, a radius describing the area around it. It is not a device GPS reading or a street address.
ISP, organization or ASN	Information about the provider or organization. An ASN identifies an autonomous system: a network or group of networks with a common routing policy.
Time zone	A value from IP location data or a separate observation from the browser; the source should be identified.
Missing value	That detail is unavailable in the result; a blank city alone does not establish that the country is wrong.

More detail does not necessarily mean more precision. A city label may refer to a nearby metropolitan area, and a map pin can represent the center of a much larger estimated area. Where a product supplies an accuracy radius, that radius helps explain the coordinates. Extra decimal places on the map do not turn the estimate into a measurement of a particular building.

A map pin represents coordinates supplied by an IP database. The surrounding shaded circle illustrates an accuracy radius, here a hypothetical 50 kilometres. The likely location is an area, not the exact address of a building.

A blank city field can mean that the edition does not include city data or that the supplier cannot make a useful estimate for that network. It does not automatically invalidate the country. Similarly, a recognizable ISP name identifies a network relationship in that dataset; it does not prove where a particular proxy server is located.

An IP time zone and a browser time zone have different origins. One is a value associated with the IP's estimated location; the other comes from the user's software environment. Changing the computer's time zone can change the browser result while leaving the IP database record untouched.

Why do updated locations reach checkers at different times?

A change in a network and a change on a lookup page are separate events. The data supplier first needs information about the change, then must assess it and update the relevant record. If a checker uses a downloaded database, its operator must also install the new release. A stored lookup result can add another delay.

For example, a supplier might already return a new country through its online service while a checker still uses an older database file. Both pages can display the same supplier's name and still disagree. The date on which you opened the checker tells you when you checked; it does not tell you when its database was built.

The supplier now classifies an example IP as Japanese. Checker 1 requests the current result through the API. Checker 2 still uses a previously downloaded database file that classifies the same IP as German. The local file must be updated separately.

A current API response is not proof that every recent network change has already been discovered and accepted. Updating a database file and correcting the information inside that database are different processes. The latest release can still contain the same location if the supplier has not changed its assessment.

Submitting a correction starts a review. MaxMind, for example, does not guarantee acceptance and considers requests against several sources. An accepted correction then needs to reach the services using that data. Waiting can help during that distribution process, but there is no shared deadline after which every checker must show the same country.

Which result matters when choosing a proxy?

The answer depends on the requirement. If an address must be classified as Japanese by a specified database, the relevant result comes from that product and its location field. Comparing several known suppliers helps reveal disagreement, but counting websites cannot replace knowing which data they use.

If the task is to view a regional offer or use a particular website, that destination provides another necessary check. It may use a different IP dataset or combine IP location with account settings and other information. The language, currency or rejection message on a page does not, by itself, reveal which country the site assigned to the IP.

A useful description of a disagreement names the IP being looked up, the checker, its data supplier, the returned field and the time of the lookup with its time zone. Include the product and database release date when available. Distinguish the date of the lookup from the date of the data. This gives the provider a reproducible comparison with its own selection criteria, rather than only a screenshot of a country flag.

Replacing an address with another from the same range can preserve the same location record. A useful replacement changes the result that matters for the task, rather than just the digits of the IP. The database explains how an address is classified; the destination shows how that classification affects your actual use.