IP lookup API for noobs?

hey everyone, super new here and trying to figure out how to add a simple country-based redirect to my small saas using some kind of IP address lookup. i'm a total noob when it comes to APIs.

my goal is to show different landing page content or maybe even redirect users based on their country. thought an ip lookup api would be the way to go.

i found a free one called 'GeoLocateFree' (just making this up) and tried to integrate it with a simple python script on my backend.

but i keep getting weird errors or incomplete data. it's really frustrating because i just cant seem to get the actual country name out of it reliably.

for example, this is what i tried and the kind of error i'm seeing:

import requests

user_ip = "1.2.3.4" # This would be dynamic in real app
api_key = "YOUR_FAKE_API_KEY" # They said free, but sometimes keys are needed
response = requests.get(f"https://api.geolocatefree.com/v1/ip/{user_ip}?api_key={api_key}")

print(response.json())

and then the output looks something like this:

{
  "status": "error",
  "message": "rate limit exceeded or invalid ip format",
  "details": "ip '1.2.3.4' is not a valid ip address or too many requests"
}

is there a better way to do this IP address lookup? am i maybe parsing the response wrong? or are these free apis just not reliable for a beginner? any recommendations for a more robust, but still easy to use, ip geolocation api for someone like me?

anyone faced this before trying to get basic location data?