ipinfo.io Alternative

ipapi.is is a cheaper and more flexible alternative to ipinfo.io, while still providing highly accurate and in some aspects superior data quality compared to ipinfo.io.

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ipapi.is was bootstrapped in late 2022 and is slowly becoming a serious player in the IP API field. This development was not unnoticed by companies and small developer teams that often seek a more flexible and cheaper alternative to ipinfo.io.
This blog post explains in depth when and how ipapi.is can be a viable alternative to ipinfo.io, especially regarding a lower and more flexible pricing model, while still providing highly accurate and in some aspects superior data quality compared to ipinfo.io.

About ipinfo.io

ipinfo.io is one of the oldest and most frequently used IP API's that currently exist on the market. One could argue that it is the gold standard when it comes to geolocation, firmographic and organizational IP address data. Especially the marketing strategy of ipinfo.io was very successful, since they were one of the first to market their API on developer platforms like StackOverflow or GitHub.

ipinfo.io was originally founded by former Facebook engineer Ben Dowling (@coderholic on X.com) in 2013. Ben talks about the genesis of ipinfo.io in two different podcasts from the past few years: .

• Code Story - Ben Dowling, IPInfo
• SaaS District - Bootstrapping a Successful IP Geolocation SaaS From a Side Hustle to 50% YoY Growth.

Even though those podcasts are sometimes hard to listen to, since the podcast hosts seem to be not too much interested in a comparatively "boring" field such as IP address data, some key takeaways are:

• ipinfo.io started as a side project and very slowly grew into a business
• ipinfo.io was created for an internal need and shared on StackOverflow, was not considered to be a serious business idea for a long time
• It was a solo project with Ben doing everything himself (Similar to ipapi.is)
• ipinfo.io was and is bootstrapped and self-funded. This means they are profitable and have full decision autonomy
• The need for ipinfo.io came from Ben's experience with advertisement fraud issues during the time when he worked at Facebook
• According to saasclub.io, it took Ben two years to scale ipinfo.io to 100k$ ARR, this is also when he quit his job at Facebook

A few years fast forward, as of 2024, ipinfo.io has 36 remote team members and is used by 500k+ developers and businesses according to their own About Page.

It is not straightforward to guess the MRR of ipinfo.io in the year 2024, but in order to make an educated guess: Assuming 36 employees earn an average salary of 75k$ per year, this would result in annual expenses of 2.7 Million Dollars for salary expenses alone.

Without any plausible reason, it is simply assumed that ipinfo.io needs to make at least double the salary expenses to be reasonably profitable. So this leads to an ARR of 5.4 Million Dollars, which translates into a MRR of 450k$. It is very likely that this is the lower end and that the true monthly revenue number is between 400k$ to 1.5M$.

How does ipapi.is compare?

ipapi.is is a much smaller company with a much smaller team. We are also bootstrapped and self-funded. So the current situation of ipapi.is is similar to the early days of ipinfo.io. Even though both companies are in different stages, it is still interesting to compare the two companies in terms of pricing and data accuracy. The big question is: Can serious companies consider ipapi.is as a viable alternative to ipinfo.io?

Data Accuracy

Data accuracy is probably the main reason why clients choose a certain IP API provider to work with. So it's of fundamental importance for clients. Data accuracy is a complicated topic and we recently published two blog articles that compare ipapi.is data to other providers and to other data sources.

• IP to Company Accuracy - Compares the accuracy of organizational data between ipapi.is and other providers. The main finding was that the company data from ipapi.is is the most accurate from all services tested (which means ipapi.is is slightly more accurate than ipinfo.io in terms of company data)
• An Honest Comparison of ipapi.is to its Competitors - This study compared the accuracy of many different API fields between ipapi.is and other providers. The main finding was that ipapi.is is on par with the big players in terms of accuracy, but that ipinfo.io is still the most accurate IP API provider, especially in IP Geolocation and VPN detection accuracy.

The two studies mentioned above are scientifically sound (at least we hope that, we made our approach public, so readers can draw their own conclusions) and were conducted in a systematic fashion.

Based on our internal knowledge and experience, it is possible to make an educated guess on how ipapi.is data compares to ipinfo.io data. Please keep in mind that this is not a scientific study and should not be considered as such. It is merely our educated guess based on our experience:

Where ipinfo.io is more accurate than ipapi.is

• ipinfo.io is more accurate in their IP Geolocation data, there is no doubt about that
• ipinfo.io is still more accurate in their VPN detection data (but ipapi.is is investing a lot of resources to catch up)
• ipinfo.io is way more accurate in their mobile detection data

Where ipapi.is is more accurate than ipinfo.io

• ipapi.is is slightly more accurate in terms of company data, also in the type classification field
• ipapi.is has generic abuser data, which ipinfo.io does not have

Where both services are equally accurate

• Both services are very accurate in their ASN data
• Both services have more or less the same accuracy in their hosting detection data

Conclusion

If IP Geolocation accuracy is of utmost importance to you, go with ipinfo.io. But it needs to be said that IP Geolocation in general with offline based approaches will never be 100% accurate. There will always be some degree of imprecision. It does not matter what technology is used, what data is collected and how it is processed, IP geolocation as IP API services do it is inaccurate by design.

For instance, ipinfo.io does latency triangulation with over 600 servers using ping and traceroute. This might improve accuracy in some aspects, but again, will never be 100% accurate. The Internet routing topology just has too many intricacies to be able to pinpoint a user's location with 100% accuracy.

ipapi.is most likely will never close the gap in terms of IP Geolocation accuracy, since our focus is more towards the cybersecurity industry.

Furthermore, ipinfo.io is also more accurate in VPN detection than ipapi.is. This is an area where we put a lot of resources in order to catch up, there is no intention to leave the playing field to ipinfo.io.

Having said that, ipapi.is is still a very accurate IP API provider, especially regarding Hosting Detection, Company Data and ASN data. The company type classification field is also slightly more accurate according to our studies.

Pricing

In the last section it was shown that ipinfo.io is in some aspects more accurate than ipapi.is, especially in terms of IP Geolocation accuracy and VPN detection accuracy (where ipapi.is is investing a lot of resources to catch up). The big question is: How much does this slight accuracy difference matter to you? How much are you willing to pay for it?

If you compare the pricing of the business subscription between ipapi.is and ipinfo.io:

Service	Price	API Lookups	API Lookups per $1
ipapi.is	$200.00 / month	2M API requests per day	300,000 lookups
ipinfo.io	$416.00 / month	500k requests per month	1,202 lookups

As the table shows, the pricing of ipinfo.io is more than 100 times higher than the pricing of ipapi.is. Furthermore, ipinfo.io does not have a flexible pay as you go model, while ipapi.is does. We do not require subscriptions, our customers can buy as many API credits as they wish without any monthly commitment.

In our opinion, the pricing of ipinfo.io is completely out of proportion to the accuracy and quality of their data. This is also one of the major complaints that ipinfo.io customers had over the years, as the screenshot below from a Hacker News discussion proves:

I love your company and service, but I hate your pricing. freedomben on Sept 14, 2023

In the end, we believe that pricing, after data accuracy, is one of the most important factors to consider when choosing an IP API provider. ipinfo.io cannot compete with ipapi.is in this aspect.

Conclusion

ipapi.is is in many aspects a strong contender and alternative to ipinfo.io. While ipinfo.io is more accurate in some aspects, we believe that ipapi.is offers a better value for the price, especially if IP Geolocation is not of utmost importance to you. IP Geolocation will never be 100% accurate anyway, especially city level data. A recent study with real and confirmed GPS geolocation data has shown the following numbers:

IP Geolocation Accuracy of various IP API Providers (Study from June 2024)

Accuracy Rank	Service	Sum Deviation (km)	Average Deviation (km)
1st	ipinfo.io	4567.66	147.34
2nd	ip-api.com	5618.66	181.25
3rd	ipdata.co	5620.74	181.31

The data above shows that even the most accurate IP Geolocation provider ipinfo.io still has an average error of 150km to the true location. The data was gathered via GPS sensor data from hundreds of website visitors. The data set was cleaned from VPN and Proxy users, verified that they are real humans.

In the end, the best that you as a customer can do is to verify the data accuracy for yourself. That's why we have and will always have 1000 free API requests per day.