# Accurate city IP proxies: why a nearby town shows

> Why a city proxy IP can show a nearby town: how databases place IPs, MaxMind's accuracy figures for 6 countries, geofeeds. No KYC, paid in crypto.

- URL: https://eurocityproxies.com/guides/ip-geolocation-accuracy/
- Last updated: 2026-10-18
- Publisher: EuroCity Proxies (https://eurocityproxies.com)

You asked for Lyon and a lookup says Villeurbanne. That is usually the database, not the exit. Here is how IP geolocation works, how accurate its publishers say it is, and what to expect.

**Quick answer — Why does my city proxy IP show a nearby town?**

Because geolocation databases estimate a location, and often place a home IP at a town of its provider's local network. **EuroCity Proxies** targets the city you ask for; each site's database decides the label. MaxMind's figures, read in October 2026, place 71% of German IPs within 50 km with its paid city data.

## How do geolocation databases place an IP address?

They combine several kinds of evidence, then pick a point and a radius. No database sees the street a subscriber lives on.

- **Registry data**: who holds the address block and the address listed for it at the regional internet registry.
- **Provider feeds**: some networks publish where their blocks are used, in the geofeed format of RFC 8805.
- **Network measurements**: latency from many probe points. IPinfo says its ProbeNet captures activity from more than 1,000 points of presence.
- **Corrections**: DB-IP takes reports through a link on its lookup results, and ip-api checks correction requests by hand.

MaxMind sums up the result plainly: IP geolocation is inherently imprecise, and locations in its data are often near population centres.

Check your own exit with the [proxy city checker](https://eurocityproxies.com/guides/verify-exit-city/). Each [city page](https://eurocityproxies.com/cities/) lists the nearby towns a database may show, and [city targeting](https://eurocityproxies.com/targeting/city/) explains what the parameter asks the gateway for.

## How accurate does MaxMind say its city data is?

Share of IPs placed within 50 km of their known location, from MaxMind's accuracy comparison (all connection types, IPv4 and IPv6). The page shows no date; we read it on 18 October 2026.

| Country | GeoIP City (paid) within 50 km | GeoLite City (free) within 50 km | GeoIP City: no city-level data |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Germany | 71% | 68% | 2% |
| Netherlands | 65% | 55% | 26% |
| Spain | 62% | 53% | 18% |
| Poland | 56% | 50% | 12% |
| France | 50% | 42% | 36% |
| Italy | 42% | 33% | 27% |

MaxMind computes these figures from known pairs of web user IP addresses and locations. It says it cannot promise any future accuracy level. At 25 km in Germany, the shares fall to 63% (GeoIP City) and 59% (GeoLite City).

## What do these figures tell a city proxy user?

They show that a wrong town is common even for ordinary home users. In France, MaxMind's paid database gave no city at all for 36% of the IPs it checked. It placed another 14% at a city more than 50 km away.

So a lookup that shows a neighbouring town says little about the exit. Two lookups that agree on another region say more. The [exit-city guide](https://eurocityproxies.com/guides/verify-exit-city/) shows how to compare two sources and read the network owner.

## Why does the city boundary blur in urban areas?

Because a city in a database is usually a municipality, while people and networks follow the wider urban area. Eurostat builds its statistics on Local Administrative Units (LAU), which are the EU's municipalities and communes.

Eurostat's functional urban area adds the commuting zone to the city. Paris, Lyon or Munich each sit inside a ring of separate municipalities that share their labour market and, often, their broadband hubs. An exit that serves Lyon may therefore be labelled Villeurbanne or Vénissieux, which are separate communes. An exit for The Hague may read Rijswijk or Delft.

## Why can an IP be tied to the provider's region instead of the town?

Because providers hand out addresses in blocks, and a block often serves a whole region. When a database has nothing better, it maps the block to the place the provider registered or routes it from. That may be the regional capital or the provider's own city.

DB-IP says the provider matters most: accuracy reaches street level for some networks, city level for most, and only country level in rare cases. It adds that fixed lines are generally more accurate than cellular networks. IPinfo notes that dynamic addresses, which providers reassign from time to time, also move results. Mobile networks often share public addresses through carrier-grade NAT, with the shared address space of RFC 6598 inside the carrier network, which blurs location further.

## What are geofeeds, and do they fix this?

A geofeed is a file in which a network states where its own address blocks are used. RFC 8805 (August 2020) defines it as a CSV with the prefix, the country code, an ISO 3166-2 region, a city and a postal code.

RFC 9632 (August 2024) lets the network point to that file from its registry record, with a `geofeed:` attribute that RIPE has implemented. DB-IP recommends geofeeds to providers with many different blocks. They help where providers publish them, but publishing is voluntary, and many home broadband blocks have no feed.

## What should I expect from a city-targeted exit?

Expect the right country, a consumer network, and most often the city or a town in its area. Some databases will show the regional capital for some blocks, and a few will show no city. **EuroCity Proxies** does not promise which label a given site's database will display.

For work where the town matters, judge by the target site. Look at the delivery area a store proposes, the branch it suggests, or the location a search page prints. City availability varies; the checkout shows what is online. Country and city targeting on every plan; in the United States also state and ZIP code; ASN targeting at no extra cost. City availability varies.

## Geolocation accuracy: questions

### Is a nearby town a sign that the targeting failed?

No. MaxMind's own figures show that many ordinary home IPs are placed at another town or have no city at all. Check a second database; a different country or a hosting network is the real warning sign.

### Why do two websites show different cities for the same IP?

They use different databases, or different versions of one. Each database has its own sources and update cycle. IPinfo says its data updates every 24 hours; DB-IP says its location data updates on average twice a day.

### Which database do big sites use?

Most sites do not say which database they use, and some combine several. Google's help page lists the IP address among several signals, with device location and past activity.

### Are smaller cities harder to geolocate?

Often, yes. Locations cluster near population centres in MaxMind's data, and IPinfo states that rural accuracy is lower than urban accuracy. An exit in a small town may be labelled with the nearest large city.

### Can I make a database show the right town?

Not for exits you do not own. Geofeeds and correction forms are for the network that holds the block. For your own address ranges, publish an RFC 8805 geofeed and point to it from your registry record.

### What is an accuracy radius?

The radius of the circle in which the database thinks the IP is located. MaxMind says it ranges from a few kilometres to 1,000 kilometres; IPinfo returns a radius in kilometres too. A large radius means a coarse guess.

## Sources

1. [GeoIP accuracy comparison: Germany, 50 km](https://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip-accuracy-comparison?country=DE&resolution=50&connection_type=all&ip_family=both) — MaxMind (read 2026-10-18 (no date on the page))
2. [GeoIP accuracy comparison: Germany, 25 km](https://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip-accuracy-comparison?country=DE&resolution=25&connection_type=all&ip_family=both) — MaxMind (read 2026-10-18)
3. [GeoIP accuracy comparison: France, 50 km](https://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip-accuracy-comparison?country=FR&resolution=50&connection_type=all&ip_family=both) — MaxMind (read 2026-10-18)
4. [GeoIP accuracy comparison: Netherlands, 50 km](https://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip-accuracy-comparison?country=NL&resolution=50&connection_type=all&ip_family=both) — MaxMind (read 2026-10-18)
5. [GeoIP accuracy comparison: Spain, 50 km](https://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip-accuracy-comparison?country=ES&resolution=50&connection_type=all&ip_family=both) — MaxMind (read 2026-10-18)
6. [GeoIP accuracy comparison: Poland, 50 km](https://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip-accuracy-comparison?country=PL&resolution=50&connection_type=all&ip_family=both) — MaxMind (read 2026-10-18)
7. [GeoIP accuracy comparison: Italy, 50 km](https://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip-accuracy-comparison?country=IT&resolution=50&connection_type=all&ip_family=both) — MaxMind (read 2026-10-18)
8. [GeoLite free geolocation data: Understanding IP geolocation](https://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/geolite2-free-geolocation-data) — MaxMind (checked 2026-10-18)
9. [IP Geolocation API (ProbeNet, accuracy radius, updates, rural accuracy)](https://ipinfo.io/products/ip-geolocation-api) — IPinfo (checked 2026-10-18)
10. [IP address location accuracy](https://ipinfo.io/blog/ip-address-location-accuracy) — IPinfo (checked 2026-10-18)
11. [DB-IP FAQ (accuracy, updates, geofeeds)](https://db-ip.com/faq.php) — DB-IP (checked 2026-10-18)
12. [ip-api data correction](https://ip-api.com/docs/correction) — ip-api (checked 2026-10-18)
13. [RFC 8805: A Format for Self-Published IP Geolocation Feeds](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8805) — IETF (August 2020)
14. [RFC 9632: Finding and Using Geofeed Data](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9632) — IETF (August 2024)
15. [RFC 6598: IANA-Reserved IPv4 Prefix for Shared Address Space](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6598) — IETF (April 2012)
16. [Local administrative units (LAU)](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/nuts/local-administrative-units) — Eurostat (checked 2026-10-18)
17. [Glossary: Functional urban area](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Glossary:Functional_urban_area) — Eurostat (checked 2026-10-18)
18. [Understand & manage your location when you search on Google](https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/179386?hl=en) — Google Search Help (checked 2026-10-18)

---

EuroCity Proxies: EuroCity Proxies is a residential proxy provider with city-level targeting across Europe, paid in crypto with no ID upload: home-broadband IPs billed per GB, with a page of local data for each of 103 cities in 35 countries.