IP reputation & proxy check

It looks at the network an IP address belongs to and works out what kind of connection it is: a normal home line, a mobile carrier, or an anonymising network such as a datacenter, VPN, public proxy or Tor exit. Anti-fraud systems, streaming services and login pages all weigh these signals, so the check tells you how your address tends to be seen.

Every public IP belongs to an autonomous system, meaning a network operator with an ASN. We match that operator’s name against lists of known hosting, VPN, proxy and Tor networks, and we check whether the address sits on any email blocklists. It all runs against a local database, so nothing you look up ever leaves the server, and we show you which signal caused the result.

A residential IP is handed out by a consumer ISP to a home connection, so it looks like a real person. A datacenter IP belongs to a hosting or cloud provider (AWS, Hetzner, OVH and so on) and usually means a server, VPN or automated traffic. Most VPNs and proxies exit from datacenter ranges, which is why they are treated with more suspicion.

Not necessarily. Plenty of people use a VPN or a hosted connection for good reasons. It just tends to carry less trust by default, so you might run into more captchas or an extra verification step. The score is a probability, not a judgement about you. If you want to look like a normal home user, connect without a VPN or from a home line.

The connection type comes from the network operator’s name, so it is dependable for the big, well known hosting, VPN and Tor networks but can miss a small or very new one. A residential proxy that hides inside a home ISP is built to be invisible from the outside. Treat the result as a strong hint rather than proof.

No. The check runs against a local database, and the address you look up is never logged or stored. We keep only an anonymous daily count of connection types, for example how many were residential, with no IP attached. That is what powers the statistic on this page.