15 Best IP Geolocation API to Offer Personalized Content

IP geolocation API are a means of offering customers personalized content on the basis of the location of the user.

IP geolocation API is able to provide information about the location geographically through the internet protocol (IP) address of the user and so relevant updates, offers and services based on the specific location can be provided. Thus, with IP geolocation API, content is personalized by being more relevant and suited to user preferences.

If your online business relies on the user’s location, you should think of leveraging Geolocation API to offer relevant products, services, news, and notifications. In fact, apart from just content personalization, IP geolocation APIs are also used for:

• Easier targeted advertising
• Accessing analytics as well as market research
• Staying compliant with region-specific regulations, and much more

In this article, I have mentioned the best IP geolocation API based on my research and also included some information about what a geolocation API is and uses for those new to the subject.

Let’s now take a look at the following Geo IP offering.

• 1. ipstack
• 2. Positionstack
• 3. ipapi
• 4. Abstract API
• 5. ipdata
• 6. Maxmind
• 7. IP Geolocation API by WhoisXML API
• 8. IP-API
• 9. ipgeolocation
• 10. Ipify
• 11. IPwhois
• 12. Ipregistry
• 13. IP2Location
• 14. DB-IP
• 15. IPInfo
• Show moreShow less

1. ipstack

They are trusted by HubSpot, Samsung, Microsoft, Airbnb, and thousands of brands.

ipstack infrastructure is scalable to serve millions of requests daily. They offer three endpoints.

• Standard lookup – to get the data behind an IP address
• Bulk – single query to retrieve multiple IPs data
• Requester – to fetch data behind requester’s IP address to API

ipstack data is divided into five modules.

• Location – a standard GeoIP data
• Time zone – get the time zone so you can serve personalized greetings or products
• Security – detect if a request is from proxy, TOR, crawler and tag them with a threat level
• Currency – show the pricing in the user’s local currency
• Connection – get the ASN and ISP details

The average response time of ipstack API is 25ms, which is excellent. Their free plan includes a location module with 100 requests per month.

2. Positionstack

2+ billion addresses covered around the world | 1+ billion geocode API lookups handled per day. PositionStack is a Free geocoding API for global places and coordinates trusted by developers and businesses worldwide.

• Forward Geocoding
• Reverse Geocoding
• Batch Requests
• Embeddable Maps
• JSON, XML & GeoJSON
• Multiple Languages

Start geocoding today with any programming language of your choice — it’s free

3. ipapi

Use it with PHP, JavaScript, or REST API. ipapi helps with the following information.

• Location – all the standard geolocation information, including calling code
• Connection – ASN, hostname, etc
• Security – Proxy, TOR, Crawler detection, and threat level

ipapi can help with many use cases like:

• Personalizing the content to your customers,
• Redirect the webpage based on language detection
• Show the local currency on a pricing page
• Prevent fraud signup

4. Abstract API

Abstract’s IP Geolocation API is serving over 3 billion calls per month to startups and websites like Shopify, Payoneer, Google, and even Stanford.

Their API is returning data like:

• City, country, and regional location
• Long lat coordinates
• Timezone details
• Currency
• Internet service provider name
• Security data including VPN, TOR, proxy, and crawler detection

Their API can be used for a variety of use cases including:

• Geolocating websites visitors
• Showing GDPR and cookie banners to European users
• Translating websites based on a visitor’s location
• Identifying VPNs, proxies, and bots
• Blocking visitors from specific countries
• Preventing fraudulent purchases

And many more…

They provide the largest free plan on the market with up to 20,000 free requests per month.

5. ipdata

ipdata.co leverage AWS global infrastructure to offer reliable performance. You can look up a single IP or bulk – your choice. You can get it started from as low as $10 per month. And, you can play around with their services by using a free API key.

Features

• Carrier detection support to help you find the ISP name
• Provides detailed Geological data like organization, timezone, ISP, postal code, latitude or longitude, language, country, city, and region.
• Supports Tor detection – A flag is returned to inform you if the IP address resembles a node of Tor Exit.
• Provides a country’s major currency details

You can use the API through REST or language-specific libraries – Python, Golang, and Javascript.

6. Maxmind

Maxmind offers a GeoIP database and fraud detection services. If you are looking to offer personalized service, ads targetting with fraud detection, Maxmind would be a good choice.

Maxmind also offers the GeoLite2 database, which is free to use under CC international licence.

7. IP Geolocation API by WhoisXML API

IP Geolocation API allows users to gather IP location data enabling various use cases, including web experience customization, fraud prevention, ensuring regulatory compliance, digital rights management, and location-based access blocking, among others. 

The API is powered by a massive IP geolocation database covering 12.9 million+ IP netblocks for 99.5% of IP addresses in use, 230000+ locations, and 215000 ISPs. 

For a given IPv4 or IPv6 address, domain name, or email, IP Geolocation API retrieves:

• IP geolocation details: country, region, city, postal code, latitude, and longitude, time zone
• GeoNames ID: ID of location in the GeoNames database
• ISP: Internet Service Provider
• AS details: Autonomous System number, Autonomous System name, Autonomous System route, Autonomous System website’s URL
• ASN type: “Cable/DSL/ISP”, “Content”, “Educational/Research”, “Enterprise”, “Non-Profit”, “Not Disclosed”, “NSP”, or “Route Server”
• Associated domains: array of domains associated with the IP
• Connection type: “Modem”, “Mobile”, “Broadband”, or “Company”

Developers can integrate the API as a building block to existing applications and systems using different programming languages. Currently, integration with the Splunk platform is available. Users can also access client libraries in PHP, Node.js, Python, Flask, Express.js, and Go.

The first 1,000 IP Geolocation API calls are complementary when registering for a free developer account.

8. IP-API

IP-API is an efficient API available at a very economical charge. Moreover, it contains a free tier package that allows you to try the APIs. However, it cannot be used for commercial purposes. API data formats are available in JSON, CSV, XML & Newline.

It supports batch query, and you can format the request for the output you want. You can query IPv4, IPv6, or URL.

9. ipgeolocation

ipgeolocation focuses on providing in-depth geolocation data. Help customers to autocomplete country, city, zip code, and more on your order page, lead generation, signup, etc.

Threat intelligence is included to detect proxy, spam traffic, bad bots, etc.

10. Ipify

A simple public IP address without any limits, Ipify works flawlessly irrespective of the technology you’re using. You can use IPv4 and IPv6 addresses with this open-source API, and the great thing is that none of the visitors’ data is logged into the system.

You can be sure Ipify will continue functioning no matter the season. Even if one of the most disastrous tornado strikes, you can sit back, knowing their service won’t get interrupted. It’s also important to mention that Randall Degges fund this service, so there’s literally no worry of them disappearing in a flash of light.

Ipify is here to stay, and you should make full use of it.

11. IPwhois

Used by thousands of developers worldwide, IPwhois is free to use for up to 10,000 requests/month. It delivers accurate data in JSON, XML, and Newline formats, and you can easily integrate it as per your preferences.

This service is known for its great speed and simplicity of the way it works. You won’t have a hard time figuring out the interface or waste time waiting for a single element to load. You can also enjoy support in multiple languages, including German, Spanish, French, and Chinese.

Every data that goes back and forth from IPwhois is secured with 256-bit SSL encryption.

12. Ipregistry

With a pay-as-you-go payment plan, Ipregistry keeps a great balance of affordability and rich features. You can seamlessly integrate their API in JSON and XML formats without worrying about making too many requests because it’s highly scalable.

Here are some of the many things this API allows you to do:

• Detect and prevent online fraud
• Locate visitors by IP and identify their currency, timezone, company data, threat data, etc.
• Analyze logs and enrich forms
• Perform redirections based on geo IP
• Identify and target users by a device used

Ipregistry has a long list of happy customers, and you can be one of them by getting started for free. You get 100,000 lookups at no cost for the beginning.

13. IP2Location

IP2Location is trusted by Asus, Ubisoft, Sony, FedEx, and Viacom.

It offers:

• Accurate geolocation that retrieves information using the client’s IP address
• Easy integration into any platform to retrieve data using SDK, REST API, databases, etc.
• Supports IPv4 & IPv6 in one API and database
• It comes with different IP database packages

This Geo IP solution can help in identifying region, country, longitude, latitude, time zone, domain name, ZIP code, connection speed, weather station data, area code, IDD country code, mobile carrier, mobile country codes (MCC), mobile network codes (MNC), advertising category, address type, usage type, elevation, residential proxies, and VPN.

14. DB-IP

dbip offers API and a downloadable database both.

It comes with an excellent administrative panel where you can create usage notification alerts, real-time analytics, historical trends, and more.

15. IPInfo

Reliable and lightning-fast – IPinfo offers the following.

• Hosting data – know who is hosting the site/IP
• Geolocation – user’s exact location with standard GeoIP data
• Network – ASN or ISP details of visitors
• Carrier detection – detect carrier name and mobile network code.
• IP type – check if IP belongs to a consumer, business, or hosting provider.
• Company – know the visitor’s company name.

With IPInfo data, you can genuinely power your business in many ways.

Now that we know the tools that can be used, let’s get to what IP geolocation is and its uses.

What is IP Geolocation?

IP stands for Internet protocol that identifies each computer or device that communicates over a network like the Internet. In a sense, every device or system, such as a computer or smartphone, that connects to the Internet has an IP address.

IP Geolocation is the method used to locate the physical location of Internet-connected devices using their IP address.

By locating the physical location of a device based on IP address through IP address tracker tools, various businesses such as e-commerce, digital advertising, cybersecurity, and law enforcement benefit from locating the user’s location either to customize the business offers or to prevent fraudulent activities. 

Uses of IP Geolocation

IP Geolocation is very frequently used in applications such as targeted advertising, content delivery, security, etc. Its inputs help businesses to locate a user’s location to customize their product and service offers to specific regions. 

It also helps businesses of all sizes to target their survey campaigns and offers based on the geographic location of website visitors.

Technically, there are two possible ways to use Geolocation IP.

• Geo IP database – you buy an IP database and host it on your server and refer to your application. The problem in using the IP database is that you have to update it; otherwise, regularly, you will not have up-to-date IP location information.
• Geo API – you don’t need to worry about maintaining and updating it regularly. You refer to the API within your application to retrieve the necessary IP information. You pay for what you use.

In addition to all these applications, one of the important roles it plays is in cracking cyber fraud. Security personnel can track the device or system based on IP Geolocation to track the origination of the malicious activity.

Conclusion

Most of the GeoIP API products offer FREE or trial, so perform few IP lookups to see which one returns satisfying data.

Check out this article for Geocoding and Maps API.