[HN Gopher] Flightradar24 for Ships
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Flightradar24 for Ships
Author : chromy
Score : 167 points
Date : 2026-03-01 11:01 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (atlas.flexport.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (atlas.flexport.com)
| sgt wrote:
| Seems to only have a tiny amount of ships compared to
| marinetraffic.com ?
| jameshart wrote:
| Seems regionally biased. This map makes it look like the
| Americas barely see any ship traffic, while the South China Sea
| is paved with ships from shore to shore.
| moffkalast wrote:
| The way I understand marinetraffic works is by having AIS
| receivers near shores and sending any received contacts to an
| API. If this works the same way then there's probably a lot
| fewer receivers so far.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| What is different from marinetraffic?
| wodenokoto wrote:
| And what's the similarity to flight radar?
| notahacker wrote:
| A real time visualization using AIS instead of ADS-B feeds,
| presumably
| wodenokoto wrote:
| as opposed to the dozens of other flight tracker sites?
| esseph wrote:
| This is ships not aircraft
| n2j3 wrote:
| Marinetraffic is a good example of enshittification. Started
| well, now it's heavy and ad-laden, practically useless without
| a paid account.
| dry_soup wrote:
| Sounds like Flightradar24
| rustyhancock wrote:
| At least for FR24 you get a "Gold" account (no longer
| business) simply for running a feed.
| tappaseater wrote:
| Nitpick: It's called Contributor and supposedly has the
| same features of the previous subscription. It still
| feels like a setup for future degradation by some
| marketing genius.
| jen729w wrote:
| In case anyone isn't aware:
|
| https://globe.adsbexchange.com
|
| - is an alternative to FlightRadar24 with more data.
| oncallthrow wrote:
| Unfortunately adsbexchange does not allow you to see the
| source/destination of flights
| esseph wrote:
| Untrue
|
| Click on the aircraft, then click on Flight Activity.
| mike_d wrote:
| ADSBX used to be volunteer ran until JETNET paid the guy
| who controlled the domain name $20 million dollars to
| "sell" it to them and steal everyone else's source code
| and data. They now do selective filtering to appease
| their commercial clients.
|
| Everyone has moved to https://globe.airplanes.live/ and
| https://app.airframes.io/flights now.
|
| Here is the lawsuit from one former group of
| contributors:
| https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23963235-golden-
| hamm...
| Noaidi wrote:
| I find Marinetraffic is fine without an account.
|
| Here is a link to oil tankers anchored around the Strait of
| Hormuz. It has much better filters:
|
| https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:56.8/cente.
| ..
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Any of these provide satellite data without charge?
|
| Also - is there any sites that publish parsed data from SAR
| sats?
| vldszn wrote:
| Looking good! Thanks for sharing
| Levitating wrote:
| Seems like it's just cargo ships? And presumably not even all of
| them.
|
| I'll prefer vesselfinder for marinetraffic.
| throw0101c wrote:
| Meta: I like the use of an actual globe when zoomed out. Wish
| more things would do this.
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall-Peters_projection
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cylindrical_equal-area_project...
| dmarinus wrote:
| I tried posting ais-catcher.org but it got ignored
| gerry_shaw wrote:
| Doman needs to be www.ais-catcher.org
| gehsty wrote:
| Interesting, a cool resource for an API endpoint for AIS data so
| aisstream.io. Seems quite solid. Any one any idea of a good
| resource for satellite AIS data - I feel like the EU probably
| funded it and I can't find anything on capricious etc.
| newzino wrote:
| These tools went mainstream when the Houthis started hitting
| container ships. Watching AIS transponders go dark or vessels
| suddenly diverting around the Cape was something you just
| couldn't get from news coverage. And with Hormuz tensions right
| now, the real-time value is even higher.
| ltrg wrote:
| This only covers container ships btw. For full coverage of all
| vessels, try the 'vessel presence' layer in Global Fishing
| Watch's interactive map, based on a feed from Spire:
| https://globalfishingwatch.org/map/
| cess11 wrote:
| Thanks for the recommendation, looks interesting. I've used
| Vessel Finder due to something being a nuisance with Marine
| Traffic.
|
| https://www.vesselfinder.com/
| joezydeco wrote:
| https://aisvesseltracker.com/ is a good one too. Shows a LOT
| more, including cruise ships and pleasure craft.
| landl0rd wrote:
| It's also a bit limited. The gold standard is still kpler.
| nehal3m wrote:
| https://www.marinetraffic.com has most AIS transponders, I use
| it to track friends on commercial and private vessels.
| nodesocket wrote:
| This seems useful speculating on short term oil prices. I believe
| the straight of hormuz may be closed or rumor of closing. Every
| expert seems to think that will spike oil prices.
| amelius wrote:
| Did anyone spot the USS Abraham Lincoln?
| appointment wrote:
| Military ships don't run their radio beacons in combat zones.
| (There was an incident last year where the USS Theodore
| Roosevelt collided with a civilian cargo ship at night at least
| partially because it tried to approach the Suez canal with it's
| beacon off.)
| dwedge wrote:
| Years ago I used to subscribe to a service that did this for oil
| tankers and tried to estimate oil to each route, they wrote a
| weekly summary. Eventually they decided they only wanted
| enterprise clients and not people like me who, working in devops,
| had no need for this service at all and only paid the $20 a month
| out of some weird fascination
| sublinear wrote:
| Off topic, but I hope the UX improves. It's almost unusable.
|
| Clicking on anything is an error-prone mess and then it hijacks
| the back button by changing the URL. That would be better off as
| a simple "share" link somewhere in the popup.
| urba_ wrote:
| I once worked on a problem: GPS tracking shipping containers,
| since one company had almost 1% lost/stolen each year. I had an
| idea of using AIS with Si4362 to get positioning data from the
| container ship itself, but it was nearly impossible to get access
| to reefer monitoring systems. We ended up just using 4G NB-IoT
| for coastal tracking and it did solve the problem
| general_reveal wrote:
| It almost seems like I could have lived life as a trader and
| traveled the seas. Don't know the type of money involved, and I
| guess I wouldn't even know where to begin doing that in real
| life. So much easier in video games.
|
| I'd just be a simple TEMU hauler, no fuss, simple life. Travel
| the world, catch some fish.
| 0dayman wrote:
| I don't see any of the American destroyers in Hormoz
| enraged_camel wrote:
| This is only for container ships.
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(page generated 2026-03-01 23:00 UTC)