IP Address Validator🔒 100% local
Validate IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. Identifies private, public, loopback, and multicast ranges.
Related Tools
Checks whether a string is a well-formed IPv4 or IPv6 address and labels the range it belongs to: private, loopback, multicast, link-local, unique-local or public, with the IPv4 octets written out in binary as well. The check is arithmetic on the string in this page, which is deliberate for internal work - testing whether 10.x.y.z is spelled correctly never announces that address to a resolver.
How to use it
- Enter one bare address, for example 192.168.1.1 or 2001:db8::1.
- Press Validate.
- Read the Status line and the Type field; Clear puts the default example back.
Worked example
192.168.1.1becomesStatus: VALID ✓
Version: IPv4
Type: Private
Octets: 192.168.1.1
Binary: 11000000 10101000 00000001 00000001The Type comes from the octet ranges coded into the tool, not from a registry or a reverse lookup.
8.8.8.08becomesStatus: INVALID ✗
Invalid IP address formatA leading zero fails: each part has to be identical to its parsed number, so 08 is rejected where 8 passes.
0.0.0.0becomesStatus: VALID ✓
Version: IPv4
Type: Public
Octets: 0.0.0.0
Binary: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000The unspecified address passes validation and is typed Public, because only RFC 1918, loopback and multicast ranges are special-cased here.
When to use it
- Sanitising a configuration value before you paste it into a config file.
- Telling a private address from a public one while working through a list of log entries.
- Reading an octet in binary when you are deriving a subnet mask by hand.
What it does not do
- It takes one bare address, so a CIDR suffix such as 192.168.1.10/24 is rejected - the subnet calculators on this site handle blocks.
- The type check only knows RFC 1918, loopback and multicast, so 0.0.0.0 and link-local IPv4 such as 169.254.1.1 are both typed Public.
- IPv6 support covers the :: shortcut and hex groups but not zone identifiers such as fe80::1%eth0, and it does not print the expanded form.
- Validation is syntactic: a VALID answer says nothing about whether anything is listening, and no ping, DNS or route check is performed.
- Only 172.16.0.0 through 172.31.255.255 counts as private, so 172.32.0.1 is correctly reported as Public.