Get Your Public IP with curl

The short version

curl whatsmyip.fyi

Prints your public address and a newline. Nothing else.

Plain text

# the apex, using content negotiation
curl whatsmyip.fyi

# the explicit endpoint, better in scripts
curl -s https://whatsmyip.fyi/ip

Use /ip in a script. It does not depend on your HTTP library sending a User-Agent the server recognises.

Forcing one address family

# IPv4 only
curl -4 v4.whatsmyip.fyi

# IPv6 only
curl -6 v6.whatsmyip.fyi

v4. has an A record only and v6. has an AAAA record only, so a success proves that family works end to end. Running curl -4 against the dual-stack apex only tells curl which family to prefer; it does not prove the other one is missing.

If curl -6 v6.whatsmyip.fyi fails with “Could not resolve host” or “Network is unreachable”, you have no working IPv6. See /ipv6-test for the diagnosis.

JSON

# the full record
curl -s https://whatsmyip.fyi/json

# just the address
curl -s https://whatsmyip.fyi/json | jq -r .ip

# a few fields
curl -s https://whatsmyip.fyi/json | jq -r '.ip, .country, .isp'

# with reverse DNS and privacy flags
curl -s 'https://whatsmyip.fyi/json?full=1' | jq .

# force JSON from any client
curl -s 'https://whatsmyip.fyi/?format=json' | jq .

# or ask for it with a header
curl -s -H 'Accept: application/json' https://whatsmyip.fyi

?full=1 adds hostname and the privacy object, both null otherwise. It costs a provider lookup, so it is slower and separately rate limited.

Markdown for agents

curl -s https://whatsmyip.fyi/ip.md

# Your public IP
IP: 203.0.113.45 (IPv4)
Location: Tallinn, Harju, EE (approximate)
ISP: Telia Eesti (AS3249)
Source: https://whatsmyip.fyi/ip.md

Short enough to paste into a prompt, and it carries its own source URL.

Other tools

# Wget
wget -qO- https://whatsmyip.fyi/ip

# Wget, IPv6 only
wget -6 -qO- https://v6.whatsmyip.fyi/ip

# HTTPie
http --body whatsmyip.fyi/ip
http --body whatsmyip.fyi/json

# Python
python3 -c "import urllib.request;print(urllib.request.urlopen('https://whatsmyip.fyi/ip').read().decode().strip())"

PowerShell, on Windows or anywhere else:

# plain text
(Invoke-RestMethod https://whatsmyip.fyi/ip).Trim()

# JSON, as an object
$r = Invoke-RestMethod https://whatsmyip.fyi/json
$r.ip
$r.isp

# IPv4 only
(Invoke-RestMethod https://v4.whatsmyip.fyi/ip).Trim()

Invoke-RestMethod parses JSON automatically. Use Invoke-WebRequest and read .Content if you want the raw body.

Using it in a script

The single-line version is fine interactively and bad in a cron job. This version sets timeouts, retries with backoff, fails loudly, and validates what it got back:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail

get_public_ip() {
  curl --silent --show-error --fail \
       --connect-timeout 5 --max-time 10 \
       --retry 3 --retry-delay 2 --retry-max-time 30 \
       --retry-all-errors \
       https://whatsmyip.fyi/ip
}

ip="$(get_public_ip | tr -d '[:space:]')"

if [[ ! "$ip" =~ ^[0-9a-fA-F:.]+$ ]]; then
  echo "unexpected response: $ip" >&2
  exit 1
fi

echo "$ip"

What each part is for:

• --fail makes curl exit non-zero on an HTTP error instead of writing the error body to stdout. Without it, a 429 page ends up in your variable and your script carries on with garbage.
• --connect-timeout and --max-time stop a hung connection from stalling a scheduled job indefinitely.
• --retry with --retry-all-errors retries transient failures. curl honours a Retry-After header when it retries a 429, so it waits the time the server asked for rather than hammering.
• The regex check catches the case where something in the path, a captive portal for instance, returned an HTML page with a 200 status.

For a dual-stack script, query both and treat a failure of either as informational rather than fatal:

v4="$(curl -s --max-time 5 https://v4.whatsmyip.fyi/ip || echo none)"
v6="$(curl -s --max-time 5 https://v6.whatsmyip.fyi/ip || echo none)"
printf 'IPv4: %s\nIPv6: %s\n' "$v4" "$v6"

Rate limits

Limits are per source address and need no key. Every response carries the remaining quota in its headers, so a well-behaved client can slow down before it is refused.

When you get a 429, read Retry-After. It is a number of seconds, and it is not advisory:

resp="$(curl -s -D /tmp/h -o /tmp/b -w '%{http_code}' https://whatsmyip.fyi/ip)"
if [[ "$resp" == "429" ]]; then
  wait="$(grep -i '^retry-after:' /tmp/h | tr -d '\r' | awk '{print $2}')"
  echo "rate limited, waiting ${wait}s" >&2
  sleep "${wait:-60}"
fi

A script that checks once a minute makes 1,440 requests a day, which is over the daily limit. Cache the value and re-check when the network changes rather than on a timer. Your public address does not change every minute.