Teams evaluating IP intelligence vendors will encounter two very different approaches.
IPinfo offers multiple API tiers with feature gating and a sales path for high-volume and database access. Users often complain about their high prices and complex pricing. On the other hand, IPLocate stands out for offering one API with the same fields on every plan (including its generous free tier), and flexible and transparent pricing.
This guide explains the differences and how they affect forecasting, integration effort, and total cost of ownership.
IPinfo pricing explained
IPinfo offers tiered API plans, plus a “contact sales” Enterprise option:
- Lite (free): country/continent + basic ASN; advertised as free and unlimited
- Core ($99/mo): city/region/postal/coords, connection types, basic privacy
- Standard ($249/mo): adds privacy detection flags
- Business ($499/mo): adds company data, hosted domains, abuse contacts
- Enterprise: bespoke; downloadable databases available via sales only.
IPinfo Lite vs IPLocate free tier
| Capability | IPLocate Free | IPinfo Lite |
|---|---|---|
| Country/continent | ||
| City, region, postal, lat/long | ||
| Privacy & threat flags (VPN/Proxy/Tor/Relay) | ||
| Hosting/datacenter detection | ||
| Company data | ||
| ASN + abuse contacts | Basic ASN only | |
| Daily cap | 1,000/day | “Unlimited” (country/ASN only) |
| Notes | Same fields as paid plans | To get city/accuracy/etc., upgrade to paid tiers |
Compared to IPLocate’s free tier, IPinfo Lite has many limitations:
- Only country/basic ASN data are free
- No city/region/postal/coords
- No privacy/threat flags
- No hosting/datacenter detection
- No company data
IPinfo pricing vs IPLocate pricing
As your business expands and requires access to more data, you’ll need to upgrade to a different IPinfo plan.
IPinfo offers multiple different named paid plans, so we’ll compare them to IPLocate’s straightforward pricing here.
IPinfo’s feature availability and gating
| Feature | IPLocate | IPinfo Lite | IPinfo Core | IPinfo Standard | IPinfo Business |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Accurate city/postal geolocation | |||||
| Proxy detection | |||||
| Residential proxy detection |
No public pricing
|
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| VPN detection | |||||
| Hosting detection | |||||
| Comprehensive hosting provider data |
Not offered
|
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| Abusive IP detection |
Not offered
|
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| Crawler detection |
Not offered
|
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| Complete ASN information | |||||
| IP to Company information | |||||
| Abuse contact data | |||||
IPinfo vs IPLocate key points of comparison
As you can see, IPinfo’s feature availability and gating is quite complex.
If you need to know whether a given IP address is a proxy, VPN, or Tor exit node, you’ll need to upgrade to IPinfo Standard. And if you need to know the company name or domain for a given IP address, you’ll need to upgrade to IPinfo Business, at an eye-watering $499/month — even if you only need to make a few queries per month.
IPLocate’s pricing is much simpler. You get the same fields on every plan, and you can scale up or down as needed.
Overages
When you exceed an IPinfo plan’s quota, extra requests are billed at the plan’s overage rate.
Here’s an example of what IPinfo’s Core plan would cost, compared to IPLocate’s single platform pricing:
| Monthly requests | IPLocate | IPinfo Core |
|---|---|---|
| 100k requests/month | $25 | $99 |
| 1M requests/month | $149 | $1,799 |
| 2M requests/month | $249 | $3,799 |
| 5M requests/month | $499 | $9,799 |
Keep in mind: You could be paying almost $10,000 per month, and still not have access to all the fields you need.
IPLocate does not offer automatic overages. Instead, we offer pre-paid credits, which can be used to cover bursts beyond your monthly quota. This means you can keep paying a predictable price, and only pay for what you use.
How to test with real data
Unlike IPinfo, you can test all of IPLocate’s comprehensive data on our free tier. Sign up for a free account and point your staging traffic at our API to validate the full field set against your production use cases.
Or, if you need offline data, contact us to get samples of any IP intelligence database.
Should you use IPinfo or IPLocate?
If you want predictable costs, no feature gating, and accurate IP intelligence powered by open data, consider trying IPLocate. Start with 1,000 requests/day free and scale using credits or a monthly quota without re-tiering or re-integrating.
- Transparent and predictable pricing: Unlike IPinfo, which charges overages, IPLocate offers a fixed monthly price, and optional pre-paid credits.
- High request quotas: IPLocate’s pricing is often an order of magnitude cheaper than IPinfo’s.
- Generous free tier: IPLocate’s free tier offers 1,000 requests per day, covering all our data types.
- All-in-one platform: IPLocate offers a single platform for all your IP intelligence needs, including geolocation, company data, and more. Don’t pay double or triple just to get that 1 extra field.
For more information, see our complete IPinfo comparison page.
