Hiding your IP address means routing your traffic through something else, so the sites you visit see that intermediary's address rather than yours. Every method below does this. They differ in who you have to trust, how much speed you give up, and what problem you were actually trying to solve.
Start with that last question, because it determines the answer. Avoiding a regional block is a different problem from stopping advertisers profiling you, which is different again from protecting a source as a journalist. Choosing the tool before the goal is how people end up paying for something that does not do what they wanted.
1. A VPN
The default recommendation, and for most people the right one. A VPN encrypts your traffic and sends it to a server you choose; sites see that server's address and location.
Good for: everyday privacy from your internet provider, using untrusted Wi-Fi, appearing to be in another country, keeping your address off gaming and torrent peers.
The trade-off: you are moving trust, not eliminating it. Your provider can no longer see which sites you visit; the VPN company now can. That makes their logging policy the entire product. Prefer providers who have published an independent audit, and treat free VPNs with real suspicion — running server capacity costs money, and if you are not paying, the business model is usually your data.
Expect to lose roughly 5 to 20 percent of your speed to encryption and the longer route. Our speed test will show you the exact cost on your line; run it with the VPN off, then on.
2. Tor
The Tor network routes your traffic through three volunteer relays, each of which knows only the step before and after. No single relay can link you to your destination.
Good for: genuine anonymity needs — journalism, activism, research in hostile environments. It is the strongest option here, and it is free.
The trade-off: it is slow, because three hops around the world cannot be fast. Video streaming is painful. Many sites present endless CAPTCHAs to Tor exit nodes or block them outright, and some banks lock accounts that connect through one. Tor Browser also resists fingerprinting by making every user look identical, which means accepting its default window size and settings — customising it undermines the protection.
3. A proxy server
A proxy relays requests on your behalf. A browser-level proxy or extension covers only that browser, not the rest of your system.
Good for: quick, low-stakes address changes and simple geo-restrictions.
The trade-off: most proxies do not encrypt anything, so your provider still sees where you are going, and a hostile proxy operator can read and modify unencrypted traffic. Free public proxy lists are a genuinely bad idea for anything involving a password. If you want the convenience of a proxy with real protection, use a VPN instead.
4. Mobile data
Switching your phone off Wi-Fi puts you on your carrier's network with an entirely different address, usually shared behind carrier-grade NAT with many other subscribers.
Good for: an instant, free change of address when you just need a different one — testing how your site looks to outside visitors, or getting past a block tied to your home address.
The trade-off: your carrier sees everything your provider used to, it consumes your data allowance, and it is not privacy in any meaningful sense.
5. Public Wi-Fi
A café network gives you its address instead of your own. It is worth listing mainly to be clear about what it does not do: the network operator, and anyone else on the network, is now in a position your home provider never was.
Use it with a VPN on top, or accept that you have swapped a known observer for an unknown one.
Comparison
| Method | Hides IP | Encrypts traffic | Speed cost | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| VPN | Yes | Yes | Low | Paid |
| Tor | Yes | Yes | High | Free |
| Proxy | Yes | Usually not | Varies | Free or paid |
| Mobile data | Changes it | No | None | Data allowance |
| Public Wi-Fi | Changes it | No | Varies | Free |
Three things that do not hide your IP address
Incognito mode. Private browsing stops your own browser from saving history and cookies locally. Your address, your provider and every site you visit are completely unaffected. This is the most widespread misconception in the whole topic.
Clearing cookies. Useful against one form of tracking, irrelevant to your address.
Turning off location services. That governs GPS access, which requires your explicit permission anyway. IP-based geolocation needs no permission and is unaffected.
Hiding your address is not anonymity
This is the part most guides skip. Your IP address is one identifier among many. If you log into an account, that account identifies you regardless of which country your traffic appears to come from. Cookies persist across a VPN connection. And browser fingerprinting — the combination of your screen size, fonts, time zone, graphics hardware and dozens of other values — often identifies a device uniquely with no cookie and no IP address involved.
You can see your own fingerprint on our browser privacy check. It is usually a more sobering read than the IP address itself.
A VPN protects the route your data takes. It does nothing about the identity you carry with you once you arrive.
Verifying it works
Three checks, in order, take about a minute:
- Load the homepage before connecting and note the address and city.
- Connect, reload, and confirm both changed. If they did not, your tunnel is not carrying traffic.
- Open the browser check and look at the WebRTC section. WebRTC can expose addresses outside the tunnel, and a leak there defeats the whole exercise.
Re-run these after any client update. VPN software occasionally reverts settings, and the failure is silent — everything looks connected while traffic quietly takes the old route.