Why Use an API Geolocation API?
There are many reasons you might want to know a user’s location. Knowing where your users are can help you target advertising, serve localized content like translations and currency conversions, better secure your users through authentication, and learn valuable demographic information that can help you improve the user experience.
An IP geolocation API makes it very easy to translate an IP address into a set of coordinate points, or information about a geographic location. An API exposes an endpoint to which you can send a network request, containing an IP address string.
The API uses an IP database to find the geographic information for that particular IP address, and then returns a response (usually in JSON format) with information on the city, state, country, and postal code. Most APIs also return additional information like ISP information, currency, time zone, and country flag.
Top IP Geolocation APIs in 2024 and Beyond
We looked at some of the best IP geolocation APIs and services available to determine which options are best for developers.
1. AbstractAPI - Best Overall
AbstractAPI’s Free IP Geolocation API is an excellent resource for developers who need a quick and easy way to do real-time IP address lookup without a lot of overhead. The API is very simple - there are no additional features beyond IP geolocation - meaning the UI is also simple and clear.
All you need to do to get started is click the “Get Started” button on the API’s homepage, sign up for a free-for-life account, and get an API key. There are handy code snippets provided in the API dashboard for all the most popular languages.
Pros
- Very easy to get started
- Clear documentation, code snippets, and a blog with tutorials
- REST API returns clear, easy-to-use results in JSON format
Cons
- Some customers report that customer support is not always responsive
Customer Reviews
"All the best. Looking forward to more lookup APIs. 👍"
"We are hitting our limits and have no way to upgrade due to a bug in their own code."
Pricing and Usage Limits
Abstract API offers free credits that can be used to test out any of their API services. All accounts are free unless you upgrade. Plans range from $9/month for 3000 requests to $399/month for 100,000 requests.
Best for: overall use
2. IPStack - Best for Big Names
IPStack is one of the best-known IP geolocation API solutions around and is trusted by big companies like AirBnb, Microsoft, and Samsung. Like AbstractAPI, their platform is simple and clear to use - they offer IP address lookup and nothing more. You can easily get started by clicking a button on the API homepage and can use the service for free up to 1000 requests per month.
The information returned by the API is exactly the same as what AbstractAPI returns: latitude and longitude coordinates, city, state, postal code, currency information, time zone, ISP data. You can look up both IPv6 and IPv4 addresses.
Pros
- Trusted by big names
- UI is clear and simple
- REST API returns an easy-to-see status symbol so you always know if there is downtime
Cons
- Slightly more expensive than AbstractAPI
Customer Reviews
"I've been using ipstack for over 6 years on a couple of different websites, and I'm really happy with what we're getting. We needed a simple geolocation service that's easy to integrate into our systems and provides accurate results for user's country, language, and currency."
“...my only suggestion for ipstack is to consider adding an option to exclude robots and crawlers from consuming your credit requests.”
Pricing and Usage Limits
The API is free to use up to 1000 requests per month. From there, plans start at $11.99 per month (billed yearly - $12.99 billed monthly) for 50,000 requests, up to $79.99/month for 2,000,000 requests.
Best for: those looking for a trusted solution
3. MaxMind - Best for Fraud Protection
MaxMind offers more than just IP geolocation: they are a leading fraud prevention and proxy detection service powered by machine learning. They boast coverage of over 99.9999% of IP addresses in use with 99.98% web service uptime since 2002.
I found it more difficult to get started with the service than Abstract or IPStack, and had to click around their site for a long time until I realized they have a completely free API option called GeoLite2. This API is comparable to but less accurate than their paid services. Where MaxMind shines is in their additional features like fraud prevention using IP geolocation to detect high-risk IP addresses (i.e. those from countries known to have a high instance of hackers and scammers.)
Pros
- Additional features for fraud prevention
- Backed by machine learning
Cons
- Costly, not easy to get up and running
- UI is not intuitive for people who aren’t technologically inclined
Customer Reviews
"It's very easy to set-up and takes less than a minute to get Access to the API, and can be used immediately to limit Access to Ads (in my case) based on Country."
“There isnt much to dislike. I havent had any issues.”
“Not very friendly for those not tech-savvy”
Pricing and Usage Limits
You can test the paid services for up to $5 worth of requests, or sign up for a free GeoLite2 account to get access to the free IP Geolocation API. Pricing for paid services was not transparent or available online. Contact the company to learn more.
Best for: those looking for fraud protection
4. IPData
IPData offers a completely free geolocation and threat intelligence API. Like MaxMind, they offer fraud prevention services, but unlike MaxMind, their site is clear and easy to navigate. It was very easy to sign up for a free account to get geolocation data and also view threat intelligence feeds that tell you whether the IP address is listed on any known threat lists.
IPData also offers mobile carrier data and ASN data. Their free tier is the most generous of all the options on this list, with 1500 requests daily as long as you’re not using it for commercial use. For developers running personal sites, this might be the most appealing option.
Pros
- Extremely generous free tier
- Threat intelligence feeds
Cons
- Free tier restricted to non-commercial use
Customer Reviews
"Ipdata is a fantastic service which provides IP data like the location, time zone, currency, language, and other data related to an IP address."
“There is nothing much to dislike, but the monthly plan pricing seems expensive compared to other services available in the market. they have a lot of official libraries supporting different languages but not available for dart (Flutter).”
Pricing and Usage Limits
The free tier is good for up to 1,500 requests per day for life. From there, pricing starts at $10/month for 2500 requests per day, up to $120/month for 100,000 requests per day. They offer 20% off if you pay annually, and they also offer custom volume pricing for enterprises.
Best for: developers running personal sites that get a lot of traffic
5. IPGeolocation.io
IPGeolocation.io is another excellent free API option. Their offerings are almost exactly the same as IPData’s offerings - a generous free tier that allows up to 30k requests per month, plus some additional APIs that return information on sunrise and sunset, time zone, etc.
Their IP location API is slightly easier to understand than IPData’s, with modules returning information on tor browsers, security, connection information, and user agent data in an easily digestible format. I found their site easier to navigate, however, I ran into issues during login that were frustrating and made getting started difficult.
Pros
- Extremely generous free tier
- Well-organized API that returns easy-to-digest modules of data
- Multi-language support
Cons
- Data returned about cloud providers is not always accurate
- Costly at low volume
Customer Reviews
"We have reached their support and it was perfectly, fast and accurate. All questions was resolved, special documentation and agreements was approved and jointly completed."
“Some of cloud providers from IP addresses which are belong to, was not detected in their API. For some reason, cloud_provider was false but should be true.”
“It was important for us to find local database, because our clients are banks that don't prefer to share their personal data. These guys quickly answered all our numerous questions before we stopped looking for a suitable solution.”
Pricing and Usage Limits
The free tier allows you up to 30k requests per month. Pricing starts at $15/month for 150k requests, and up to $500/month for up to 20 million requests. The lower tiers are slightly more costly than other options on this list, but at scale, they are cheaper.
Best for: developer teams and medium-sized businesses
6. IP-API
IP-API has been operating since 2012 and is one of the most popular IP geolocation services around. Like Abstract, they do not offer additional features beyond basic IP geolocation lookup - so if you need threat assessment or information about Tor or proxy browsers, this is not the right service.
Their free tier offers a quick and easy way to get started, and their pricing structure is the most straightforward of any on the list. They are based in Europe, so are guaranteed to be GDPR compliant. The most impressive thing about their service is that they offer unlimited requests, even at the cheapest pricing tier.
Pros
- Unlimited requests (except on the free tier)
- Responses returned in JSON, XML, PHP, CSV or Newline
- Batch requests
Cons
- VAT taxes not accounted for in pricing
- Some users report that customer support is not good (however, others report that it is excellent)
Customer Reviews
"Very simple and has a free tier that is quickly able to be set up. The support team is incredible and are very helpful to try to get solved."
"The customer support is really bad. For the prices they charge, you would think you would get a reply when facing issues."
“Ran into an issue and tried to troubleshoot myself for about 40 minutes before finally reaching out to support. I had expected it would be a day or two before receiving a response, but it was literally minutes and the issue was immediately resolved.”
Pricing and Usage Limits
The free tier is limited to 45 requests per minute, which is still a very generous offering. The free tier is limited in that you cannot get an API key, use SSL, get usage statistics, or set up access restrictions. From there, pricing is very straightforward: $13.99 per month for access to all features, or custom pricing for enterprise.
Best for: developer teams and medium-sized businesses
7. IP2Location
IP2Location has an incredibly frustrating UI and website that I found cumbersome and difficult to navigate. All the examples on their homepage took a very long time to load, and the styling was so broken I had trouble finding what I was looking for.
The one saving grace of this website was the IP Geolocation API, which, once I found it, was very easy to use. It is essentially the same as all the other API options on this list: sign up for a free account, get an API key, and start using the service for limited lookup. If you want more requests, you will need to pay for them.
IP2Location also offers batch lookup for both IP and proxy addresses (upload a file of up to 50,000 IP addresses for scanning.)
Pros
- API itself is clear and easy to use
- Returns proxy information
Cons
- IP2Location main site is a nightmare
- More expensive than other options on the list
Customer Reviews
"We use this service while taking a payment, it helps us to detect payment fraud by matching IP details with payment details; sometimes it helps to stop anonymous users too who try to mess with our platform."
"Not sure if small businesses can afford database pricing plans."
“It is less appropriate if you have a huge database and that you want to analyze it easily and quickly.
It is well suited if you want an overall of the situation but not an accurate result.”
Pricing and Usage Limits
The free tier gives you 30k requests per month and 500 WHOIS domain lookups per month. It also comes with basic support. From there, plans start at $49/month for 150k requests, up to $499/month for up to 600k requests.
Best for: large businesses and enterprise
8. IPInfo
IPInfo offers not only basic IP geolocation lookup but also a ranges API that can be used to find out a range of IP addresses owned or operated by a single company, VPN and proxy detection, company details at a particular IP address, ASN data and WHOIS data.
I found the information easy to digest because the APIs are all accessible separately and also as a single request: meaning, you can access each different endpoint, or send a single request to get information from any or all of the endpoints at once.
They also allow you to log in and download IP data directly from their database (a subset of this data is available under the free plan.)
Pros
- Multiple APIs return a lot of detailed information
- Handy tools and formats like a map view, CIDR to IP range converter, IP summary, and Twitter Bot
Cons
- One of the most expensive options on the list
Customer Reviews
"The documentation is really simple and easy to understand. The result of a request is also fairly simple to process and it covers all the required attributes regarding location ex. lat, long, state, country, street address, pin code etc. The API is always up and running never faced any issues with request made to the server."
“The most frustrating thing about using ipinfo.io is what whenever I'm manually looking up an IP address, there's a pop-up that says "Help us get Better" which interrupts my usage of the service."
“The service is highly reliable as well as cost-effective for our use case. We haven't had any issues and have been using the service for several years. The dashboard has sufficient information for trouble-shooting as well.”
Pricing and Usage Limits
You can get free access to their geolocation API for up to 50k requests per month with no support or additional features. Basic access to everything else starts at $99/month for up to 150k requests and increases to $249/month for up to 250k requests. The business plan is $499/month for up to 500k requests.
Best for: enterprise
9. PositionStack
PositionStack is most similar to AbstractAPI in terms of its pricing and offering. They have a simple-to-use free geolocation API that allows up to 25k requests per month, and pricing starts at $9/month from there.
PositionStack offers no fancy features: just forward and reverse geocoding. Their offerings are slightly more sophisticated than Abstracts in that they offer JSON, XML, and GeoJSON responses, plus embeddable maps, and results in multiple languages. Their documentation is clear and easy to follow, although they don’t offer any specialized tutorials for complete beginners like Abstract does.
Pros
- Clean, clear, straightforward offerings
- Multi-language support, responses returned in XML and GeoJSON
Cons
- No threat or risk assessment, or additional features like analytics
Customer Reviews
"PositionStack is undoubtedly a very affordable geocoding API. You will find many alternatives on the market but very few match the price this one offers, especially when compared to the feature-rich portfolio it has."
Pricing and Usage Limits
You can get free access to their geolocation API for up to 25k requests per month with no support. Plans start at $9/month for 100,000 requests, $49/month for 1,000,000 requests, and $99/month for 3,000,000.
Best for: developers
Best IP Geolocation APIs: Side-by-Side Comparison
Factors to Consider When Choosing an IP Geolocation API
Which geolocation API you ultimately choose will depend on your specific needs and use cases. However, there are some general points to keep in mind when making your decision.
Data Accuracy
How frequently is the data updated? Where do they source their data from? If you can’t find this information easily on the API’s website, it could be a sign that either their data is not accurate or that it is sourced unreliably. If you talk with a sales representative in order to set up your account, be sure to ask for this information.
Price
Some APIs are costlier at low volume but get cheaper the more you use them. You will need to analyze your own usage rates to make a decision about which API is right for you. For personal use, many of the free tiers on this list will be sufficient, but if your site has very heavy traffic, you may want to consider a paid plan that will allow you near-unlimited requests.
Ease of Integration
Most APIs are very easy to integrate with your tech stack. Check their documentation. Is it clear and easy to follow? Determine who in your company will be responsible for implementing the API - are they tech-savvy? Will they require customer support?
Coverage
Do you need global or regional coverage? There may be no point paying for an API that has data centers all over the world if your customers are only in a small, localized area. Some APIs might offer custom pricing if you only need IP geolocation done in a particular region. Talk to your sales representative to see what they can do for you.
Common Questions About IP Geolocation APIs
What is an IP Geolocation API?
An IP geolocation database or API is a service that accepts a network request containing an IP address (or m any IP address) and returns geographical information about the device at that IP address. Geographical data usually includes city, state, region, postal code, local currency, and time zone, and can also include information on proxy servers, threat data, hostname, etc.
Are geolocation APIs free?
Most IP address geolocation APIs offer a free plan or access to some portion of their data for free. Usually, doing basic IP address lookup is free for non-commercial use, up to a certain number of requests per month. If you need high volume or additional features, you will need to sign up for a plan.
What is the best geolocation API?
The best geolocation API for you will come down to your specific needs and use cases. We believe some of the best overall geolocation APIs include AbstractAPI, IPStack, MaxMind, and IPGeolocation.io.
Conclusion
IP geolocation is important for data enrichment, marketing, enhanced security and threat data assessment, localizing content, and improving your user experience. Developers and businesses of all sizes can benefit from understanding a user’s location and incorporating the functionality of IP geolocation into their websites and apps.
