`ipaddress`

The Python ipaddress module provides tools for creating, manipulating, and working with IPv4 and IPv6 addresses and networks. It supports a wide range of standardized operations, including subnetting, address comparison, and validation:

>>> import ipaddress

>>> ip = ipaddress.ip_address("192.0.2.1")
>>> ip
IPv4Address('192.0.2.1')

>>> ip.is_private
True

The 192.0.2.0/24 subnet is reserved for documentation (TEST-NET-1), so .is_private is True because the address is not globally reachable.

Key Features

Handles IPv4 and IPv6 addresses and networks
Provides factory functions for creating address, network, and interface objects
Supports comparisons and ordering for addresses, networks, and interfaces
Enables membership tests to check whether an address belongs to a network
Provides methods for subnetting, supernetting, and network relationship checks
Supports iterating over networks and enumerating usable hosts
Exposes address and network properties, such as private, multicast, and loopback
Provides helpers for summarizing ranges and collapsing networks

Frequently Used Classes and Functions

Object	Type	Description
`ipaddress.ip_address()`	Function	Creates an IP address object from an address string or integer
`ipaddress.ip_network()`	Function	Creates an IP network object from an address/network string
`ipaddress.IPv4Address`	Class	Represents an IPv4 address
`ipaddress.IPv6Address`	Class	Represents an IPv6 address
`ipaddress.IPv4Network`	Class	Represents an IPv4 network
`ipaddress.IPv6Network`	Class	Represents an IPv6 network
`ipaddress.IPv4Address.is_private`	Property	Indicates whether the address is not globally reachable
`ipaddress.IPv6Address.is_private`	Property	Indicates whether the address is not globally reachable
`ipaddress.IPv4Network.hosts()`	Method	Returns an iterator over the usable hosts in the network
`ipaddress.IPv6Network.hosts()`	Method	Returns an iterator over the usable hosts in the network

Examples

Checking if an IP address is private or not globally reachable:

>>> import ipaddress
>>> ip = ipaddress.ip_address("10.0.0.1")
>>> ip.is_private
True

Creating and iterating over hosts in an IP network:

>>> network = ipaddress.ip_network("192.0.2.0/29")
>>> list(network.hosts())
[
    IPv4Address('192.0.2.1'),
    IPv4Address('192.0.2.2'),
    IPv4Address('192.0.2.3'),
    IPv4Address('192.0.2.4'),
    IPv4Address('192.0.2.5'),
    IPv4Address('192.0.2.6')
]

Comparing IP addresses:

>>> ip1 = ipaddress.ip_address("192.0.2.1")
>>> ip2 = ipaddress.ip_address("192.0.2.2")
>>> ip1 < ip2
True

Common Use Cases

The most common tasks for ipaddress include:

Validating and parsing IP addresses and networks from user input
Checking whether an address belongs to a given network
Calculating subnets and supernets for network planning
Enumerating usable hosts in a subnet for provisioning or scanning
Summarizing address ranges and collapsing networks for route aggregation
Filtering addresses by properties, such as private, multicast, or loopback
Representing host interfaces as address/prefix pairs
Generating reverse DNS PTR names for addresses

Real-World Example

Suppose you need to filter a list of IP addresses to keep only those that belong to a specific subnet. You can achieve this by using the ipaddress module:

>>> import ipaddress

>>> addresses = ["192.0.2.1", "192.0.2.15", "198.51.100.2"]
>>> network = ipaddress.ip_network("192.0.2.0/24")

>>> [addr for addr in addresses if ipaddress.ip_address(addr) in network]
['192.0.2.1', '192.0.2.15']

In this example, you use the ipaddress module to filter out IP addresses that don’t belong to the specified network.

Tutorial

Learn IP Address Concepts With Python's ipaddress Module

In this step-by-step tutorial, you'll learn how to inspect and manipulate IP addresses as Python objects with Python's ipaddress module, improving your understanding of IP address mechanics and patterns used by the module.

intermediate stdlib

By Leodanis Pozo Ramos • Updated June 6, 2026

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ipaddress