Public IP lookup
Shows the address your router presents to the internet, plus whatever the geolocation database guesses about it. Useful, instant, and tells you nothing about the devices inside your home or office.
THE HONEST ANSWER
Online IP scanner: what a browser can and cannot do
No website can scan the devices on your local network. A browser has no access to raw sockets, ICMP or ARP, and it cannot reach an address that did not answer a request it was allowed to make. Tools advertised as online IP scanners either scan your public IP address from their own server, or hand you software to download.
Why a web page cannot scan your local network
Finding devices on a network means doing things a browser is built to prevent. Discovery sends ARP requests on the local segment, or ICMP echoes and TCP connection attempts to hundreds of addresses that may never reply, and then draws conclusions from which ones stayed quiet. JavaScript in a page has no interface for any of that: no raw sockets, no ICMP, no ARP, and no way to open a connection to an arbitrary host and port and read the result.
That restriction is deliberate and worth keeping. If a page could enumerate the network it was loaded on, every site you visited from a café, an office or a hospital could inventory the machines around you. The missing capability is a security feature, not an oversight, and it is why every real network scanner is a program you run rather than a page you open.
What tools calling themselves “online IP scanners” actually do
Port scan of your public address
The site scans you from its server, so it can only see what your router exposes to the internet. That is a genuinely useful check of your perimeter, and a completely different question from "what is on my Wi-Fi".
A download in disguise
Many results for "online IP scanner" are landing pages for desktop software. The scanning still happens on your machine; only the marketing was online. Judge these the way you would judge any download.
Browser WebRTC tricks
A page can sometimes learn your device’s own private address through WebRTC. That is one address, your own, and browsers keep narrowing it for privacy reasons. It is not a network scan.
Pick the tool that matches your question
| What you want | What does it | Why |
|---|---|---|
| List every device on my home or office network | A scanner that runs on a computer connected to that network | Discovery needs ARP or direct probes on the local segment, which only a local process can send. |
| Check which ports my router exposes to the internet | An online port-scanning service, scanning your public IP | This is the one job an online tool does better, because it tests you from the outside. |
| Find out what my public IP address is | Any public IP lookup page | The address is in the request you just made, so a web page can read it directly. |
| See what a specific device on my LAN is running | A local scanner, then open the service it found | Only something inside the network can connect to a private address such as 192.168.1.24. |
Local scanners that are free to use
If your question is “what is on my network”, you need something running on that network. Several good options cost nothing. Angry IP Scanner is free, open source and cross-platform, and its releases run without a separate installation step. Nmap is the deepest option and ships a graphical front end, Zenmap, in its Windows and macOS installers; it repays the time it takes to learn. Both vendor pages are linked here directly, checked September 2026, so you can confirm the current state yourself rather than take our word for it.
IPScanner.Pro is our own answer to the same question, built around showing the evidence behind every conclusion instead of asserting a device type and hoping you agree. It runs on your computer, keeps Local Only results off the network, and does not require an account to scan.
What IPScanner.Pro does instead of a browser scan
- You pick a detected interface or type an authorised private range, then confirm before anything is sent.
- Quick, Balanced and Thorough discovery check progressively more services; Full ports checks all 65,535 TCP ports on devices you select, with the exact work estimate shown first.
- Each identification shows what it was based on, so a guess reads as a guess rather than a fact.
- Local Only results stay on the machine, and retained history is encrypted at rest.
There is a browser demo of that workspace at the scanner demo. It runs on sample data and never touches your network — which is the whole point of this page.
Common questions
Is there a free online IP scanner that works without downloading anything?
Not for local network discovery. A page can scan your public IP from its own server without any download, and that is free on many sites. Listing the devices on your own network from a browser tab is not possible, because the browser cannot send the kind of traffic discovery needs.
Why can a browser load any website but not scan my network?
Loading a website means making an HTTP request to a name that answered. Scanning means sending ARP or ICMP packets and raw TCP connections to addresses that may not answer at all, then interpreting the silence. Browsers deliberately expose no interface for that, because a page from any site could otherwise map the network you are sitting on.
Are online IP scanners safe to use?
A public IP lookup or an external port scan is low risk: you are telling a service an address it already saw. Be more careful with pages that ask you to install something to "scan online", and check who publishes the software and whether the build is signed.
Do I need administrator rights to scan my own network?
Usually not for ordinary TCP discovery. Your operating system will ask permission for local network access on macOS, or show a firewall prompt on Windows, and a managed work machine may block it by policy regardless of your rights.
Is it legal to scan a network?
Scan networks you own or have been authorised to test. That is the rule this product enforces in its own interface: discovery requires you to choose a private range and confirm it, and it will not enumerate the public internet.
Want the desktop scanner when it opens to everyone? The download page says exactly where each platform stands, and you can ask to be told when it is ready.
Found something on this page that is wrong or out of date? Tell us at support@ipscanner.pro and we will correct it.