What is Confidence Area?

Because many users share the same public IP address — through carrier-grade NAT on mobile networks, or shared broadband in homes and offices — it's not always possible to place an IP at a precise point. The Confidence Area makes this uncertainty explicit rather than hiding it behind a single coordinate that may be misleading.

The Confidence Area is a polygon representing the realistic geographic boundary within which an IP address is likely operating. It's derived from our router service area analysis: we calculate the actual geographic coverage of the network infrastructure responsible for delivering traffic to that IP, based on verified ground truth data.

A smaller polygon means higher location confidence. A larger polygon means the IP could plausibly be anywhere within that area. Both are honest — the difference is in how much the network evidence constrains the location estimate.

For more detail on how to use the confidence area in practice, see What is a Confidence value?