Every IP address tells a story. With traditional geolocation, that story stops at a city name and a set of coordinates. You can see that a user is in Denver, but not that they're at Coors Field. You can see that a user is in London, but not that they're at Heathrow Airport. Those are three real IPs from our dataset, each resolved to a specific venue.

That gap between "where" and "what" is the difference between a generic signal and an actionable one. Today, we're announcing IPinfo Places: a new dataset that maps IP addresses to specific physical venues, powered by WiFi network observation.

Standard IP geolocation tells you where traffic resolves. IPinfo Places shows you what infrastructure that traffic is actually connected to.

Places is available in early access, and selected customers can access the data at no additional cost for a limited period, until general availability later this year. You can learn more about our coverage and request access here.

A New Layer of IP Intelligence

IP geolocation has been a foundational tool for understanding users on the internet. It powers content localization, ad targeting, fraud detection, and compliance workflows. But it operates at a resolution that stops at the city or neighborhood level.

That's fine for many use cases. But a growing number of applications need more:

AdTech platforms want to know if a user is at an airport (travel intent) or a sports venue (fan engagement and/or sports interest), not just that they're in a metro area.
Fraud and identity teams need to verify that a login is physically plausible. Knowing someone is "in Atlanta" doesn't help when the question is whether they could have moved from Hartsfield-Jackson to a downtown hotel in 10 minutes.
Content and product teams want to deliver venue-aware experiences without asking users to share their location.

IPinfo Places introduces a new category of IP intelligence: venue-level infrastructure context. It extends IP data beyond city-level geolocation into observable network environments.

How IPinfo Places Works

IPinfo Places uses WiFi network observation to create verified mappings between IP addresses and physical venues. It builds on the same measurement infrastructure that powers IPinfo's core geolocation accuracy, including ProbeNet, our internet measurement platform, and extends it to resolve individual places.

When a device connects to public WiFi at a known venue like an airport, hotel, stadium, or conference center, our mobile measurement platform observes the WiFi SSID and matches it to geospatial reference data. The result is a 1:1 mapping: this IP address is at this specific place.

Our approach observes the network directly, producing ground-truth data that's both more precise and harder to spoof.

What You Get

The Places API returns structured venue data for any IP in our dataset:

// GET https://api.ipinfo.io/places/12.11.109.230?token=$TOKEN
{
"ip": "12.11.109.230",

"name": "John F. Kennedy International Airport",
"category": "airport",
"ssid": "_Free JFK WiFi",
"latitude": 40.6461,
"longitude": -73.7843
}

Each response includes the venue name, category, SSID, and precise coordinates. The dataset currently covers 500K+ IPs across 30+ venue categories organized into six groups:

Transit: Airports, train stations, bus stations, subways/metros, ferry stations
Accommodation: Hotels, resorts
Business: Conference centers, coworking spaces, libraries
Entertainment: Cinemas, theatres, music venues, casinos, bars/pubs, gaming arcades, bowling alleys, skating rinks, golf courses
Sports: Stadiums, sports centers, water parks
Attractions: Museums, galleries, aquariums, zoos, botanical gardens, theme parks, landmarks/monuments, events venues

Additional fields are available for selected use cases, including building height and area, building polygon, BSSIDs, and last seen date.

Categories and coverage are expanding rapidly. For the most current list, visit ipinfo.io/data/places. The categories listed above reflect coverage as of March 2026.

Beyond Geolocation: What Changes With Venue-Level Data

Places doesn't replace geolocation: it adds a layer on top. The combination is where the real value lives.

Contextual Ad Targeting Without Cookies

An ad impression arrives with IP 12.104.110.29. IP geolocation tells you "Dallas." IPinfo Places tells you "Dallas Fort Worth International Airport", connected via the DFW Public 5G Wi-Fi network. That context turns an anonymous impression into a travel intent signal, and travel intent might command higher CPMs.

Early access customers in the AdTech space are already using IPinfo Places to activate venue-level targeting in real-time bidding workflows, reaching users at airports, hotels, and entertainment venues with contextually relevant campaigns: no cookies or SDKs required.

Stronger Fraud Signals That Are Harder to Spoof

Fraud models rely on location data, but IP geolocation is easily spoofed with VPNs. WiFi-observed venue data adds a physical verification layer that's much harder to fake: you can't spoof being on an airport's WiFi network from your couch.

Identity and risk teams in early access are building mobility indices and behavioral scoring models on IPinfo Places data, using venue visit patterns to detect impossible-travel scenarios and strengthen transaction and identity verification.

Venue-Aware Product Experiences: No Permissions Needed

If a user is at a stadium, your app should know, without prompting them for location access. IPinfo Places enables venue-aware personalization directly from the network layer: stadium-specific content, hotel check-in flows, airport lounge access, all triggered by the IP without requiring the user to opt into location sharing or install an SDK.

Why WiFi Observation Matters

There are other approaches to connecting IPs with physical places. Some providers use proximity inference, estimating that an IP is "near" a venue based on geographic signals. Other place databases like Google Places and Foursquare offer rich venue metadata, but require latitude/longitude coordinates or device IDs as input, not IP addresses.

IPinfo Places is different in two key ways:

Verified, not inferred. We observe the WiFi network directly, producing a confirmed connection between an IP and a venue, not an estimate based on proximity. This means higher confidence in the mapping and fewer false positives.

IP-native. The input is an IP address. No SDK integration, no device ID, no latitude/longitude. If you have the IP, you can resolve the venue. This makes IPinfo Places work anywhere you already have IP data: ad servers, fraud engines, CDNs, analytics platforms.

Get Early Access

IPinfo Places is available in early access. Selected customers can access the data at no additional cost for a limited period, until general availability later this year.

During Early Access, you get:

Full API access to the Places dataset
Direct input on the product roadmap: what categories and data fields we build next
A head start before GA pricing takes effect

IPinfo Places is a great addition to IPinfo's existing geolocation, ASN and privacy detection data, giving you the most complete picture of any IP address available today.

Request Early Access →

IPinfo Places is in public beta as of March 2026. Categories, coverage, and availability are subject to change. For questions, contact sales@ipinfo.io.