IP intelligence APIs compared
Where an address is, who runs it, and whether it is a visitor at all: datacenter ranges, Tor exits, named VPN and relay exits, verified crawlers and public blocklists.
Below are the 13 services Spaw is measured against for IP intelligence, each with the figures its own public pricing and documentation pages state. Every row carries the date that vendor's pages were read, which is its own and need not match the others'; a row those pages carry no value for reads "not on the pages read" rather than a guess. Corrections are welcome at [email protected].
| service | pricing model | free tier | price per 1,000 at ~10k | feeds behind the flags | checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spaw | Pay-as-you-go credit packs whose credits never expire, or optional plans, billed monthly or yearly, that deposit the same credits every month for less and roll unused plan credits over up to three months' allowance; both through Stripe Checkout. One credit buys five answered IP lookups | 100 free credits every month, no card required | $1.80 per 1,000 IP lookups at 5 to the credit (Starter pack: 1,000 credits for $9), or $1.40 on the Starter monthly plan (1,000 credits for $7 a month) | Public feeds, each named in the answer with the date it was synced: DB-IP Lite and RFC 8805 geofeeds for location, the five registries' delegated statistics for allocation, Spamhaus DROP and ASN-DROP and abuse.ch Feodo Tracker for blocklists, the Tor Project's exit list and Onionoo, the Mullvad, NordVPN and Private Internet Access server lists plus the open X4BNet lists, Apple's iCloud Private Relay egress list, the cloud providers' own published ranges, and the verification files Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Perplexity, DuckDuckGo and Ahrefs publish for their crawlers. | own pricing page |
| Spaw vs AbuseIPDB | Plans with daily request allowances: Individual free "Forever!", Basic $25/mo or $228/year, Premium $99/mo or $1,068/year, Enterprise custom | Individual: free forever with no credit card, 1,000 check and report requests, 100 block checks and 5 bulk reports a day | not on the pages read | One feed, its own: the abuse confidence score is computed from reports submitted by AbuseIPDB users, and totalReports is "a sum of the reports within maxAgeInDays". A check also returns countryCode, usageType, isp, domain, isTor and isWhitelisted, which "reflects whether the IP is spotted in any of our whitelists". | 2026-09-10 |
| Spaw vs ip-api | Two tiers. The free endpoint: "Our endpoints are limited to 45 HTTP requests per minute from an IP address" and "We do not allow commercial use of the free endpoint". The Pro service: "€13.3 per month, when paying for 12 months", with "Unlimited requests", "SSL (HTTPS)", "Commercial use allowed" and a "99.9% SLA" ("If the general API uptime falls below 99.9% in a month, we will automatically extend your subscription for 10 days"). | The free endpoint, for non-commercial use only: 45 requests per minute per address over HTTP ("256-bit SSL encryption is not available for this free API") | not on the pages read | Not published as feeds. The answer carries three flags, each described in one line: mobile ("Mobile (cellular) connection"), proxy ("Proxy, VPN or Tor exit address") and hosting ("Hosting, colocated or data center"); the pages do not say where they come from. | 2026-09-12 |
| Spaw vs IP2Location | IP2Location.io API, monthly query plans: Free $0 ("50K IP Geolocation API queries/month", "11 IP Attributes", "Attribution Required"), Starter "$49/month" ("150K IP Geolocation API queries/month", "20 IP Attributes"), Plus "$249/month" ("300K IP Geolocation API queries/month", "59 IP Attributes"), Security "$499/month" ("600K IP Geolocation API queries/month", "79 IP Attributes"); overage per increment Starter $10, Plus $50, Security $100. Databases, standard licence per year: DB1 "$99", DB2 "$399", DB8 "$1,299", DB18 "$2,799", with a site licence at ten times those figures. | "50K IP Geolocation API queries/month" with 11 attributes, basic geolocation and open-proxy detection only, "Attribution Required"; without a key "up to 1,000 queries per day" | not on the pages read | Its own IP2Proxy data: is_proxy with a proxy object of "last_seen, proxy_type, threat, provider", and on the higher plans is_vpn, is_tor, is_data_center, is_public_proxy, is_web_proxy, is_web_crawler, is_ai_crawler, is_residential_proxy, is_spammer, is_scanner, is_botnet, is_bogon and a "fraud_score" from 0 to 99. The Free and Starter plans detect open proxies only. | 2026-09-12 |
| Spaw vs ipapi | Monthly plans by lookup quota: Starter "$15 billed monthly" for 60,000 lookups, Professional "$25 billed monthly" for 150,000, Business "$49 billed monthly" for 500,000, Enterprise "$99 billed monthly" for 2,000,000, Premium "$199 billed monthly" for 6,000,000, Ultimate "$399 billed monthly" for 15,000,000; annual billing is 20% less. | A free trial of "up-to 1000 IP lookups in a day" (about 30,000 a month), "for testing & development purposes" and "Not for production use" | not on the pages read | None: the documented answer carries no proxy, VPN, Tor, hosting or threat field. The pricing page names the data behind the location as "IP geolocation by DB-IP" and the "IP2Location LITE database". | 2026-09-12 |
| Spaw vs ipdata | Monthly plans by daily request quota: Personal "$10 per month" with "2,500 requests daily", Lite "$30 per month" with "10,000 requests daily", Startup "$50 per month" with "50,000 requests daily", Business "$120 per month" with "100,000 requests daily"; "20% off all annual plans" at the time of reading. | "1500 free requests daily", "restricted to non-commercial use"; on the free tier, over the quota "all further requests are blocked and you receive an email notification" | not on the pages read | not on the pages read | 2026-09-12 |
| Spaw vs ipgeolocation.io | Monthly credit plans, "A standard unified IP lookup uses 1 credit": Starter "$19/month" for "150000 API Credits Per month", Plus "$49/month" for 500,000, Pro "$79/month" for 1,000,000, Business "$129/month" for 2,000,000, Premium "$249/month" for 5,000,000, Enterprise "Contact Sales"; annual billing gives "2 months free". "Paid monthly plans reset every month. Paid annual plans reset every year". | "1000 API Credits Per day for life" with no credit card, "a hard limit of 1000 requests per day" and "No overages on Free"; the free plan returns "core location without the radius and confidence fields" | not on the pages read | Its own collection: the security page describes "telemetry from active honeypots, proprietary blocklists, VPN and proxy enumeration, and real-time behavioral analysis", answering "VPN, proxy, residential proxy, and Tor flags, plus provider names, confidence scores, and last-seen dates", flags for "known attackers, bots, spam, and cloud IPs", an is_anonymous field and a "threat score from 0 to 100". Security fields are on paid plans. | 2026-09-12 |
| Spaw vs IPinfo | Monthly plans by API request quota: Lite $0/mo, Core $26/mo for 150,000 requests, Max $163/mo for 250,000, Enterprise custom for "1M+". Database downloads are listed separately, "Starting at $1,000/month". | IPinfo Lite at "$0/mo", free forever with no credit card, giving unlimited API requests at country level only | not on the pages read | Its own measurement rather than published lists: the pages describe ProbeNet, "our proprietary internet measurement platform", reaching "44% of the world's ASNs within 1 millisecond" from "more than 1,000 points of presence". Privacy detection (VPN, Tor, proxy, relay) starts on the Core plan, with the service names added on Max; residential proxy detection is Max and above. | 2026-09-10 |
| Spaw vs IPQualityScore | Monthly plans by lookup quota: Free $0 (1,000 lookups a month), Startup "As low as: $99 / Month" (5,000), SMB Basic "$499" (10,000), SMB+ "$999" (75,000), Enterprise custom. "Any valid request sent to our Proxy Detection, Email Verification, or Device Fingerprinting services including lookups performed through a batch CSV file check will consume a lookup credit." | 1,000 lookups a month, capped at 35 a day | not on the pages read | Its own collection rather than published lists: "IPQS gathers data directly from our proprietary honeypots, traps, crawlers, and thousands of live sites opted into our threat intelligence network." The proxy detection answer carries proxy, vpn, tor, active_vpn, active_tor, fraud_score, ISP, organization, ASN, connection_type, recent_abuse, bot_status, is_crawler and the location fields. | 2026-09-10 |
| Spaw vs Ipregistry | Credits, "1 lookup = 1 request = 1 credit" (batch endpoints use "one credit per lookup in the batch request, plus 1"). Subscriptions: Starter "100,000 credits / mo" at "$29 $24 / month", Professional "300,000 credits / mo" at "$79 $66 / month", Business "1,150,000 credits / mo" at "$199 $166 / month", Scale "2,450,000 credits / mo" at "$399 $333 / month" (the lower figure is the annual rate). Pay-as-you-go packs: 15,000 credits for $10, 100,000 for $50, 250,000 for $100, 1,750,000 for $500. | "20,000 free credits on sign-up" with "No credit card, no time limit" | $0.67 (the $10 pack of 15,000 credits, $0.000667 a lookup) | Its own datasets, derived "from multiple sources using unique AI algorithms" including "BGP tables, Regional Internet Registry (RIR) databases, ISP data, data-sharing agreements, geofeeds, latency-based tracking". The security object carries is_abuser, is_attacker, is_bogon, is_cloud_provider, is_proxy, is_relay, is_tor, is_tor_exit, is_vpn, is_anonymous and is_threat. | 2026-09-12 |
| Spaw vs ipstack | Monthly plans by request quota: Free "100 Request/mo." at $0, Basic "50,000 Request/mo." at "$12.99/mo.", Professional "500,000 Request/mo." at "$59.99/mo.", Professional + "2,000,000 Request/mo." at "$99.99/mo.", Custom on request; yearly billing "Save up to 15%". Overage fees apply past the quota, with notifications at 75%, 90% and 100%. | "100 Request/mo." at $0, without SSL encryption, support or the paid modules (SSL, commercial use and the Location, Time Zone and Connection modules are listed for paid plans) | not on the pages read | A "Security Module" is listed for the Professional + plan only; its fields were not readable on the documentation pages we fetched, so they are not reproduced here | 2026-09-12 |
| Spaw vs MaxMind | Per query, by service, with no minimum published: "If you estimate your volume of queries to be over $2,500 a month, contact us to discuss rates." | A no-cost trial is offered ("Experience the functionality and benefits of our GeoIP web services at no cost"); no free monthly allowance is stated on the page checked | $0.10 per 1,000 for Country ($0.0001 a query), $0.30 for City Plus ($0.0003) and $2.00 for Insights ($0.002) | Not described on the pages checked. Insights is documented as "Everything in Country and City Plus, + Proxy Detection, and confidence factors, user count and type, static IP score, demographic data, and anonymizers", so anonymiser detection is the top tier only. | 2026-09-10 |
| Spaw vs proxycheck.io | not on the pages read | not on the pages read | not on the pages read | not on the pages read | 2026-09-12 |
| Spaw vs Spur | not on the pages read | not on the pages read | not on the pages read | Its own collection, sold as feeds and as an API. Feeds: Anonymous ("all IPs relating to anonymous VPNs, datacenter proxies, ISP proxies, virtual desktops, and other datacenter-centric anonymizing infrastructure"), Anonymous Residential ("The Anonymous feed, plus all IPs relating to residential proxies, residential VPNs, malware proxies, blockchain proxies, and other callback technologies"), Service Metrics and Datacenter/Hosting ("all netblocks belonging to datacenter and hosting providers"). The Context API answers infrastructure, organization, the autonomous system, client behaviours, proxies, device types, risks such as CALLBACK_PROXY, TUNNEL and GEO_MISMATCH, services such as OPENVPN, and tunnels with operator (for example PROTON_VPN), type and an anonymous flag. | 2026-09-12 |
Spaw vs AbuseIPDB
AbuseIPDB is a reputation service built on abuse reports its own users submit: a check returns an abuse confidence score with the report count, country, usage type, ISP and a Tor flag, and plans are sold as daily request allowances rather than credits.
Where it fits better: Teams that want to know whether other operators have complained about an address recently, and to contribute their own reports back.
Full comparisonAbuseIPDB alternativesAbuseIPDB's own sitechecked 2026-09-10
Spaw vs ip-api
ip-api is a geolocation JSON API with a free, non-commercial, HTTP-only endpoint limited by request rate, and a Pro subscription that adds HTTPS, unlimited queries and commercial use; its answer carries one proxy flag, one hosting flag and one mobile flag beside the location and network fields.
Where it fits better: Non-commercial projects that fit under 45 requests a minute, and small commercial ones that want a flat, unlimited subscription over per-lookup pricing.
Full comparisonip-api alternativesip-api's own sitechecked 2026-09-12
Spaw vs IP2Location
IP2Location sells geolocation as downloadable databases (DB1 to DB26, licensed yearly) and, through IP2Location.io, as an API on monthly query plans whose higher tiers add proxy, VPN, Tor, datacenter, crawler and residential-proxy detection and a fraud score; the classic web service no longer takes new registrations.
Where it fits better: Teams that want a downloadable database under a yearly licence, or an API whose top plan carries a fraud score and a wide set of proxy and crawler flags.
Full comparisonIP2Location alternativesIP2Location's own sitechecked 2026-09-12
Spaw vs ipapi
ipapi.co is a geolocation API sold as monthly lookup quotas, whose pricing page credits its data to DB-IP and the IP2Location LITE database; the answer carries location, country and network fields and no proxy, VPN or Tor flag.
Where it fits better: Teams that need country, city, currency and network facts on a predictable monthly quota and do not need any anonymity or threat signal.
Full comparisonipapi alternativesipapi's own sitechecked 2026-09-12
Spaw vs ipdata
ipdata is a geolocation and threat API sold as daily request quotas, from a free non-commercial tier to a Business plan, whose pricing page says it does not keep records of the addresses looked up beyond a day; its documentation site refused automated reading, so the fields are not reproduced here.
Where it fits better: Teams that want a daily quota with a no-records promise and are happy to read the field list from the vendor's own documentation.
Full comparisonipdata alternativesipdata's own sitechecked 2026-09-12
Spaw vs ipgeolocation.io
ipgeolocation.io sells geolocation and a separate security API on monthly credit plans, with location built from its own measurements and a security answer that flags VPN, proxy, residential proxy and Tor with provider names, confidence scores and a 0 to 100 threat score.
Where it fits better: Teams that want an accuracy radius with every city answer and a single threat score from a vendor that runs its own honeypots.
Full comparisonipgeolocation.io alternativesipgeolocation.io's own sitechecked 2026-09-12
Spaw vs IPinfo
IPinfo is an IP data company that sells geolocation, ASN, privacy detection and company data as monthly API plans and as database downloads, collected through its own measurement network rather than assembled from third-party feeds.
Where it fits better: Teams that want city-level geolocation from a vendor that measures the internet itself, and are willing to buy a plan tier per field they need.
Full comparisonIPinfo alternativesIPinfo's own sitechecked 2026-09-10
Spaw vs IPQualityScore
IPQualityScore sells fraud detection across several signals on one lookup credit: proxy and VPN detection, email verification and device fingerprinting all draw from the same monthly quota, and the IP answer carries a fraud score alongside the connection facts.
Where it fits better: Teams that want one vendor, one credit pool and a single fraud score across IP, email and device signals.
Full comparisonIPQualityScore alternativesIPQualityScore's own sitechecked 2026-09-10
Spaw vs Ipregistry
Ipregistry is a geolocation and threat API sold as credits, either monthly subscriptions or pay-as-you-go packs, whose security object answers abuser, attacker, bogon, cloud provider, proxy, relay, Tor, VPN, anonymous and threat flags and whose data is described as built from BGP tables, registry databases, geofeeds and latency measurements.
Where it fits better: Teams that want a credit model with pay-as-you-go packs and a security object with a dozen named flags, from a vendor that names its data sources in general terms.
Full comparisonIpregistry alternativesIpregistry's own sitechecked 2026-09-12
Spaw vs ipstack
ipstack is a geolocation API on monthly request quotas from a 100-request free tier to a two-million-request plan, with a bulk endpoint and a security module reserved for its top plan; its documentation pages rendered only a header to our fetcher, so the field list is not reproduced here.
Where it fits better: Teams already on the apilayer marketplace that want a high-volume monthly quota and are willing to buy the top plan for bulk and security answers.
Full comparisonipstack alternativesipstack's own sitechecked 2026-09-12
Spaw vs MaxMind
MaxMind sells GeoIP as three per-query web services — Country, City Plus and Insights — and as downloadable databases, with proxy and anonymiser detection reserved for the Insights tier.
Where it fits better: Teams that want geolocation at the lowest published per-query price and are content to buy Insights, at twenty times the City Plus rate, for anonymiser detection.
Full comparisonMaxMind alternativesMaxMind's own sitechecked 2026-09-10
Spaw vs proxycheck.io
proxycheck.io sells an API for checking whether an address is a proxy; every page we tried on 2026-09-12 answered 403 Forbidden to automated reading, so nothing about its pricing, limits, fields or data is reproduced here.
Where it fits better: Not assessable from the vendor's pages on the checked date.
Full comparisonproxycheck.io alternativesproxycheck.io's own sitechecked 2026-09-12
Spaw vs Spur
Spur is an anonymity-infrastructure vendor: its Context API answers whether an address is a VPN, proxy or other tunnel with the operator named, and its feeds list anonymous, residential-proxy and datacenter address space; its pricing page rate-limited our fetcher, so prices are not reproduced here.
Where it fits better: Security teams that want anonymity infrastructure, residential proxies included, as a feed to run inside their own systems, with the operator behind each tunnel named.
Full comparisonSpur alternativesSpur's own sitechecked 2026-09-12
What Spaw answers
- Feeds behind the flags
- Public feeds, each named in the answer with the date it was synced: DB-IP Lite and RFC 8805 geofeeds for location, the five registries' delegated statistics for allocation, Spamhaus DROP and ASN-DROP and abuse.ch Feodo Tracker for blocklists, the Tor Project's exit list and Onionoo, the Mullvad, NordVPN and Private Internet Access server lists plus the open X4BNet lists, Apple's iCloud Private Relay egress list, the cloud providers' own published ranges, and the verification files Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Perplexity, DuckDuckGo and Ahrefs publish for their crawlers.
- Refresh cadence
- Every feed re-syncs daily, the botnet command-and-control list hourly, and the geofeed crawl weekly. Each response names every dataset it consulted with the date it was last synced, and /status lists them all.
- Geolocation source
- The DB-IP Lite database, overridden wherever the operator publishes the location itself — an RFC 8805 geofeed, Apple's relay list, a VPN provider's server list. location_source says which answered, and location_confidence is graded from a weekly accuracy report rather than asserted.
POST /v1/ip — 1 credit per 5 answered lookups. Free: reserved, private and unallocated ranges. Every rule is on the pricing page.
The other signals
Check the table against your own data
Every Spaw account gets free credits every month with no card, and one key answers every signal. Upload a list, keep your columns, and download only the rows you want. The pricing page has every billing rule in full.
Product names are trademarks of their owners. Spaw is not affiliated with any of them. Markdown version: /compare/ip.md