MAC Address Lookup
Find the hardware maker behind any MAC address from its OUI prefix. Paste one or a whole list, spot randomized phone MACs, all in your browser.
- Free, no account
- No watermark
- No usage limit
About the MAC Address Lookup
You open your router's list of connected devices, or you run arp -a on your laptop, and it is a wall of hex with a few names you recognize in it. Then a row that just says the maker is unknown, and now you are wondering whether someone is on your Wi-Fi who should not be.
This tool takes the guessing out of it. Paste a single MAC address or a whole list, and it names the hardware maker behind each one from the OUI, which is the first half of the address that a manufacturer registers with the IEEE. The addresses that come back with no maker get a real explanation instead of a blank, and that matters more than it sounds, because on a modern network most of those blanks are phones hiding on purpose.
Everything runs in your browser off a built-in vendor list. Nothing you paste is sent anywhere, nothing is scanned, and there is no sign-up. A lot of sites that call themselves a MAC lookup quietly push your input to their server and log what you searched, which is not something this one can do.
How to use
- Look up one address. Paste a MAC in any format, colon, hyphen, Cisco dots, or plain hex with no separators. The maker shows up as you type, next to a plain read of what kind of address it is. The example buttons fill in a few real ones so you can watch it work.
- Identify a whole list. Switch to Identify a list and paste your ARP table, a DHCP lease list, or the output of a network scan. It pulls every MAC out of the text, ignores the IP addresses and other noise around them, and names them all in one table.
- Spot the randomized ones. Any address the tool flags as private or randomized is not a real hardware maker, it is a device using MAC privacy. That is your cue to stop hunting for a vendor that was never there.
- Copy or share. Copy pulls the results out as clean text for a ticket or an inventory sheet. Share hands a coworker a link that reopens the exact address or list you were looking at, so explaining "this is the mystery device" takes one click.
Why some devices show no maker
If you scanned your network a few years ago, every device gave up its maker cleanly. Now half of them come back empty, and nothing is broken, the phone is doing it on purpose to protect your privacy.
Recent iPhones and Androids make up a fresh, fake MAC address for each Wi-Fi network they join, instead of showing their real hardware address. The point is to stop stores, airports, and networks from following one phone across visits by its permanent ID. A made-up address sets one specific bit, called the locally administered bit, and the visible effect is that the second character of the address becomes a 2, 6, A, or E. No company ever registered that address, so a vendor lookup finds nothing.
The tool reads that bit for you and says the address is randomized, rather than leaving you to guess. So that alarming unknown device on your network is very often your own phone, or a guest's, doing exactly what it was built to do. The real hardware maker is still there underneath. You can usually see it by turning the phone's private address off for that network, or by reading the device's true MAC from its own settings.
What the address itself tells you
A MAC address is twelve hex digits in six pairs. The first three pairs are the OUI, the block a maker registers. IEEE hands these blocks out, and one block covers around 16 million addresses, which is why a giant like Apple or Samsung holds dozens of them. The last three pairs are the device-specific part the maker assigns on the production line.
Past the maker, the very first pair also carries a couple of flags. One marks whether the address is a normal single device or a group address that reaches many devices at once, and the tool calls that out too. For everyday lookups the maker and the randomized check are what you actually came for, so that is what the result leads with.
Frequently asked questions
Why does my phone show a different MAC on every network?
You already know it is privacy randomization. What people usually need is where to switch it off for the one network that demands a real address. On an iPhone, open Settings, tap Wi-Fi, tap the small "i" next to the network name, and turn off "Private Wi-Fi Address." On iOS 18 that control is renamed "Private Address," so set it to Off. On Android, open the saved network's settings, tap "Privacy," and choose "Use device MAC" instead of the randomized default.
There is a catch worth knowing. The setting is per network, so changing it on your home Wi-Fi does nothing for the office. And some networks really do need the fixed address, an office that allowlists devices by MAC, a hotel or dorm that registers you by it, or parental controls that cap screen time per device. With a rotating MAC those systems see a new device every visit, so they either block you or reset your limits until you hand over the real one.
Can I find the exact model, owner, or location from a MAC address?
No, and be careful with any site that claims otherwise. The OUI only names the company that made the network chip, not the model, the person holding it, or where it is. A MAC address also does not travel past your local network, so a random website out on the internet cannot even see yours. To tie a MAC to a real device you have to be on the same network and match it up in your router or an ARP scan.
The maker comes back as unknown but the address looks normal. What gives?
Usually one of two things. The block might be a newer or smaller registration that is not in this tool's vendor set, which leans toward the makers you actually meet on home and office networks rather than all forty-thousand-odd registered blocks. Or it is randomized and just looks ordinary at first glance. The tool splits those two for you, a randomized address gets labeled private while a genuine gap in the vendor list reads as unknown. So an unknown that is not marked private is almost always a real but uncommon maker, worth a quick search against the full IEEE registry if you need the name.
Is it safe to paste a real MAC address here?
Yes. The lookup runs in your browser against a list that is already loaded with the page, so the address never leaves your device and nothing is saved. You could pull your network cable after the page loads and it would still work. A MAC on its own is also low risk to share, since it cannot be used to reach your device from outside your local network.
Can two completely different products share one vendor?
Constantly. A company buys an OUI block and stamps it on everything from that division, so its router, its range extender, and its smart plug can all share the same first half. The maker narrows a device down to who built its network chip. To know the exact product you usually still need the model number or some context about where it sits.
Does this work for a switch or printer, not just phones and laptops?
Yes. Anything with a wired or wireless port has a MAC, and switches, printers, cameras, and servers register genuine vendor OUIs. Gear like that almost never randomizes its address, so the maker resolves cleanly. That is part of why a randomized blank stands out as probably a phone rather than the network hardware you set up yourself.