What Is WHOIS? (And Why It's Not IP Geolocation)

WHOIS is a way to look up registration and allocation information for domains and IP ranges. It's often confused with IP geolocation, but they answer different questions.

What is WHOIS?

WHOIS is a protocol and set of databases that store information about internet resources. Depending on what you query, WHOIS can show details like:

• Domain registrar and nameservers
• Creation/expiration dates
• Organization or contact info (often privacy-protected)
• IP range owner / allocated network (RIR data)

WHOIS vs IP lookup

An IP lookup (like the one on our homepage) typically shows network and geolocation-related data such as ISP/ASN, region, city (approximate), timezone, and connection type.

WHOIS focuses more on administrative ownership/allocation and routing blocks. See WHOIS and ASN in our glossary.

Privacy notes

Many domains use WHOIS privacy services to hide personal contact data. For IP ranges, ownership usually reflects an ISP or hosting provider - not an individual user.

If your goal is privacy, start with protecting your IP address and learning what websites can infer from it in IP geolocation.