How to Check Your Public IP on Linux (curl)

Updated: 2026-05-31

On a headless server you cannot "look at a web page", so you query an echo service that returns the IP it sees.

With curl

curl https://show-ip-addr.com/api/myip   # JSON: ip, hostname, country, org
curl ifconfig.me                          # plain IP
curl -s https://api.ipify.org             # plain IP

Extract just the IP from our JSON:

curl -s https://show-ip-addr.com/api/myip | grep -oP '"ip":"\K[^"]+'

With dig (DNS-based, no HTTP)

dig +short myip.opendns.com @resolver1.opendns.com
dig -4 +short txt ch whoami.cloudflare @1.1.1.1

Local vs Public

Remember ip addr shows your private IP, not the public one — see Linux IP commands and how to find my IP.

Force IPv4 or IPv6 with curl -4 / curl -6. In the current deployment /api/myip returns IPv4 (the server reaches the Internet over IPv4), while /api/ip?q= and the lookup tools accept IPv6 too.