flightradar24.com
Flightradar24.com is a live flight-tracking website that lets people follow aircraft around the world and see useful flight, airport, route, and aircraft data.
What does Flightradar24.com actually do?
The main feature on Flightradar24.com is a moving world map filled with aircraft that can be opened to show details about each flight.
The company's latest figures say the service tracks more than 250,000 flights per day and has more than 5 million daily users.
Its mobile apps have also passed 100 million downloads, which shows that flight tracking has grown far beyond a small hobby for aviation fans.
The service began as a hobby project in Sweden in 2006, and its receiver network was opened to other people in 2009.
How does Flightradar24.com know where planes are?
Most aircraft positions come from a technology called Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast, or ADS-B, which sends an aircraft's position, altitude, speed, and other data.
The aircraft gets its position from satellite navigation and then broadcasts the data so nearby receivers can collect it.
Flightradar24 says its ADS-B network includes more than 50,000 receivers placed around the world.
Its current press information puts the wider network at more than 60,000 connected receivers, making it the world's largest independent ADS-B receiver network.
This large network matters because one ground receiver normally cannot see aircraft everywhere due to radio range, terrain, altitude, and the curve of the Earth.
The service also mixes position data with flight plans, schedules, and information from a database containing more than 1.5 million aircraft.
Can Flightradar24.com track planes over oceans?
Ground receivers work best over land, so oceans have always been one of the hardest places for public flight trackers to cover.
Flightradar24 expanded this coverage in February 2026 by adding Aireon space-based ADS-B data collected by receivers carried on satellites.
Satellite tracking helps show aircraft over oceans and other remote areas where normal ground stations cannot receive their signals.
Flightradar24 also uses radar data in some regions, UAT signals from smaller aircraft in the United States, ADS-C, FLARM, and other data sources.
How live and accurate is the flight map?
The map is close to real time, but users should not expect every aircraft icon to show its exact position at the exact second they look at it.
Flightradar24 says ADS-B positions shown to users can have a delay of about eight seconds.
Aircraft tracked with multilateration, or MLAT, can have a delay of roughly 10 to 12 seconds because their positions must first be calculated.
MLAT uses signals received by at least three receivers, and Flightradar24 says it can reach position accuracy of about 10 to 20 meters under good conditions.
MLAT coverage can also become weaker when a plane descends below roughly 5,000 to 10,000 feet in places without enough nearby receivers.
This explains why a plane can disappear from the public map even though professional air traffic controllers are still tracking it.
Why is having so many receivers important?
A bigger receiver network can fill coverage gaps, improve low-altitude tracking, and give MLAT enough separate signals to calculate more aircraft positions.
Flightradar24 reported more than 50,000 active ground stations in 2025, including about 7,000 complete receiver kits supplied by the company itself.
The remaining stations were mainly receivers built or purchased independently by people who chose to share their data with the service.
This creates a useful network effect because every well-placed new receiver can make the map better for many other users.
How much air traffic can Flightradar24.com handle?
A recent record shows how large the system has become, as Flightradar24 tracked 153,359 commercial flights on July 23, 2026.
The comparable Thursday in July 2025 had 144,806 commercial flights, so the 2026 figure was about 5.9% higher.
Flightradar24 also recorded 287,364 total flights on another day in July 2026, which became its second-highest daily total at that time.
One Airbus A350-1000ULR test flight that month attracted almost 3.7 million followers, showing that one unusual flight can draw an audience as large as a major online event.
What do paid Flightradar24.com plans add?
The free service already works for simple flight tracking, while paid plans mainly add more history, map tools, filters, aircraft information, weather layers, and other specialist features.
The current subscription comparison lists more than 1 million subscribers and more than 60 premium-only features.
Free users can access seven days of flight history, while Silver increases this to 90 days and Gold increases it to 365 days.
The Business plan offers up to three years of flight history and is designed for both commercial and personal use.
Is Flightradar24.com the same as air traffic control?
Flightradar24.com should be viewed as a public flight-data service rather than a replacement for the systems used by professional air traffic controllers.
Its map combines many public, commercial, calculated, and shared data sources, so some aircraft can appear late, disappear, or have incomplete information.
ADS-B itself is now important to professional aviation too, and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has required compliant ADS-B Out equipment in specified controlled airspace since January 1, 2020.
Who will get the most value from Flightradar24.com?
Flightradar24.com is especially useful for travelers checking an incoming aircraft, aviation fans watching unusual planes, families following a flight, journalists studying major events, and professionals exploring aviation data.
Its biggest advantage is not simply the colorful map, because the real strength comes from combining a huge receiver network, satellite coverage, aircraft records, schedules, and several tracking technologies in one simple interface.
For casual users the free version offers plenty of useful information, while people who need deeper history, advanced filters, or professional data tools have clear reasons to consider a paid plan.