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:

Python 
>>> 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:

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

Creating and iterating over hosts in an IP network:

Python 
>>> 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:

Python 
>>> 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:

Python 
>>> 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.

By Leodanis Pozo Ramos • Updated Dec. 22, 2025
Python Standard Library Share Feedback