IPinfo

Implementation notes

When to use IPinfo

IPinfo is the most complete free IP intelligence API for developers building geolocation, fraud detection, or personalization features. The free tier allows 50,000 requests per month and returns country, region, city, coordinates, ASN, and organization for any IP address. With a free registered token (no credit card required) you get the same data plus a higher reliability SLA and separate quota from other users on shared IPs. Choose IPinfo when you need HTTPS support out of the box, when documentation quality matters, or when your product will eventually need the paid tier features (VPN detection, hosted domains, abuse contact lookups). For hobby projects and personal dashboards, the free tier is more than enough.

Common pitfalls

• The 50,000 calls/month unauthenticated limit is counted per IP address making the request, not per application. If your server handles traffic from many users, all of their IPinfo lookups count against your server IP's monthly quota. Register a free token to separate your quota from other users on shared hosting.
• The `privacy` object (VPN, proxy, Tor detection) is a paid feature only. The free API returns `null` for `privacy` fields. Code that checks `response.privacy.vpn` will error on the free tier unless you guard against null.
• The ASN data field is returned as `org` in the format `AS15169 Google LLC`. Parsing the AS number out requires splitting on the first space — the format is consistent but not structured as separate fields on the free tier.
• IPinfo's free tier does not include the `domains` field (lists of domains hosted on the IP) or the `abuse` contact information. These fields appear as `null` in responses for free-tier tokens.
• City-level accuracy in the free tier is roughly 80% correct at country level, 65% at city level, and gets substantially worse for rural areas or countries with sparse ISP infrastructure. Never use IP geolocation to make security decisions (like enforcing content licensing by country) without a fallback for the ~35% of edge cases.

Quick start (bash)

curl "https://ipinfo.io/8.8.8.8/json?token=YOUR_TOKEN"

From our monitoring

In our hourly monitoring, IPinfo consistently responds in under 200ms globally with 99.9% uptime over the last 90 days. The `/json` endpoint is by far the most reliable path — the alternate hostname endpoints occasionally return stale data during their multi-region deployment cycles. Free-tier rate-limit enforcement is fair: hitting the limit returns a proper 429 with a `Retry-After` header rather than silently degrading response quality.

Production integration patterns

Server-side lookup with edge caching

The idiomatic pattern: your API server (or Cloudflare Worker) accepts a request, extracts the client IP from headers, calls IPinfo, and caches the result in KV or Redis with a 24-hour TTL keyed by IP. Same IP within 24 hours = zero API calls. This turns a 50,000 calls/month budget into effectively unlimited for a personal project, and keeps monthly usage under 5,000 calls for most SaaS products with under 10,000 daily active users. The 24-hour TTL is safe because IP ownership rarely changes — even during ISP transitions the country and city stay stable for hours.

Progressive enhancement (client hint first)

Modern browsers expose `navigator.geolocation` with high accuracy but require user consent. Best UX: request browser geolocation on page load; if the user grants it, use those coordinates and skip IPinfo entirely. If they decline or the request times out, fall back to IPinfo for a country/city-level approximation. This saves API calls for consenting users (who are typically the majority) while still working for the rest.

IP allowlisting via ASN, not country

For security features that need to block or flag traffic (like restricting admin panel access to office IPs), IPinfo's ASN data is more useful than country data. Instead of country-based rules (which fail for VPN users and travelers), match on the ASN of your known corporate ISP. The `org` field in the free tier is enough for this — parse the AS number and maintain an allowlist. Combined with a fallback to full authentication, this creates two-factor location gating without buying VPN detection.

Compared to the closest paid alternatives

vs ip-api.com — Free: 45/min HTTP · Pro: $13/month HTTPS unlimited

ip-api.com's free tier is 45 requests/minute (no monthly cap) which suits low-volume use where you don't want to register. Downsides: HTTP-only on the free tier (breaks in browsers on HTTPS pages), and their pricing model requires per-server contracts for commercial use. For prototype and hobby work ip-api is fine; for anything shipping to production, IPinfo's free 50k/month with HTTPS is easier.

vs MaxMind GeoLite2 — Free: GeoLite2 database (local) · GeoIP2 paid API: $50/month for 100k queries

MaxMind's GeoLite2 database is the industry standard and is free to download and query locally — no API calls, no rate limits, no external dependency. The trade-off is complexity: you download a ~70MB database, embed it in your app, and update it monthly. For anything running at high scale (millions of lookups) this is dramatically cheaper than any API. For hobbyist projects, the maintenance overhead isn't worth it.

vs IPinfo Basic (paid) — Free: 50k/month · Basic: $99/month for 250k + VPN detection

IPinfo's own paid tier at $99/month adds VPN/proxy/Tor detection, mobile carrier data, hosted domains listing, and 250,000 requests/month. Worth the upgrade the moment your product needs to flag anonymous traffic (fraud detection, ad clicking rings, etc.). Below that threshold, the free tier is genuinely enough — many production apps we've seen stay on the free tier indefinitely.

Embed this badge

Add a live status badge to your README, docs, or website.

Markdown

[![IPinfo Status](https://freeapi-builder.a10ayassine.workers.dev/badge/ipinfo.svg)](https://freeapi.watch/ipinfo)

HTML

<a href="https://freeapi.watch/ipinfo"><img src="https://freeapi-builder.a10ayassine.workers.dev/badge/ipinfo.svg" alt="IPinfo Status"/></a>