Build your product on the network’s data

FlyItalyADSB is a REST API with live positions of about 11,000 aircraft worldwide, from ADS-B and multilateration, unfiltered (military included). You can use it in a product you sell on every plan, Free included; the whole world in one request costs €49 a month. Below: the key facts, the rules in plain words, what each pattern uses and the code to start with.

The rules in short Free key

aircraft with a position

~11,000

refresh

every 0.5 s

position age

half < 0.5 s

registration and type

~99%

Measured on 26 October 2026, 20:24 UTC, worldwide.

Key facts

The answers to what people ask when they compare flight data APIs, in one place.

What it is: A REST API with live positions of aircraft worldwide, from ADS-B and multilateration (MLAT), collected by a network of about 3,192 receivers. JSON, base https://api.flyitalyadsb.com/v2, key in the X-Api-Key header.
Coverage: Worldwide: ~11,000 aircraft with a position at the measurement of 26 October 2026, 20:24 UTC. Receivers: United States 36%, Germany 15%, UK and Ireland 11%, Rest of Europe 16%.
Data per aircraft: readsb’s aircraft.json format: ICAO hex, position, barometric and geometric altitude, speed, track, vertical rate, squawk (~85%), callsign (~98%), registration (~99%), ICAO type (~99%), category, military/PIA/LADD flags (dbFlags) and position source (type: ADS-B or MLAT; 88% from ADS-B). No routes or schedules.
Filtering: None: military, PIA and LADD aircraft included, also those seen only through our multilateration.
Freshness: The picture refreshes every half second; median position age 0.32 s (90th percentile 8.1 s).
Plans and prices: Free, Starter €9, Pro €49, Fleet €149 a month, before tax. Limits per plan in the table below; the whole world in one request with Pro and Fleet.
Over the limits: An error (429, or 403 for the radius), never extra costs: refused requests aren’t counted or billed.
Commercial use: Yes, on every plan, Free included, in apps and devices you sell too. The rules.
Licence: Data under CC BY-SA 4.0: one attribution line (“Flight data: FlyItalyADSB (flyitalyadsb.com), CC BY-SA 4.0”). Share-alike covers the data and datasets built from ours, not your product’s code or design.
Keys: One per product, free, with an email address and no card: get it here. Moving to a paid plan keeps the same key.
History: Each aircraft’s daily track, every day since 17 August 2026 (today included, up to about 10 minutes ago), plus periods in 2022–2024 with gaps; and which aircraft flew over a place in a time window. History.
Alerts: Events by area (emergencies 7500/7600/7700, military and other notable aircraft, up to 7 days) on every plan; signed webhooks on paid plans. Alerts.
Formats and tools: OpenAPI 3.1, ADS-B Exchange v2–compatible paths, an MCP server for AI assistants, examples on GitHub.
Reliability: Best effort, no SLA. Public status page with history and email alerts.
Who runs it: A network started in Italy in 2020; servers and billing by Nesso Labs S.r.l. (Brescia, Italy). Contact.
In production: FlyScout, an app that finds unusual flights worldwide, on the Pro plan.
Comparison: Limits, terms of use and requirements of the other open ADS-B APIs, side by side: the comparison.

Plan	Price a month	Per minute	Per month	Max radius
Free	free	30	300,000	500 km
Starter	€9	60	1,000,000	1,000 km
Pro	€49	300	10,000,000	whole world
Fleet	€149	300	10,000,000	whole world

Prices before tax. Every plan allows commercial use. For more than 25 aircraft, more volume, an SLA or to resell the data as an API or feed: a tailored agreement.

What are you building?

Displays and devices

Displays, frames, LEDs, ESP32

The aircraft overhead on a desk or wall object, from a handful of units to a few thousand.

Your server fetches once and serves every device.

Open the guide → Mobile and web apps

Spotting apps, alerts, maps

An app or a site that shows traffic, finds unusual flights or sends alerts.

The key stays on your server, the app asks you.

Open the guide → Drones and light aviation

Drones, ultralights, pilots

Low-level traffic near a field, to plan and to know who is in the air.

What you see at low altitude, and what you don’t.

Open the guide →

Already built on it

Products built on the network’s data, shown with their makers’ permission.

Mobile app · Pro plan

FlyScoutby Apptractor

Finds unusual flights worldwide, such as go-arounds, holds, emergencies and tankers flying racetracks, and replays them on a map.

How it uses the dataFlyScout’s server reads the whole world from our API and derives the events; the app only talks to that server.

“Really happy I switched to your service.”
Stan, Apptractor

Website ↗Google Play ↗

Built something on FlyItalyADSB data? Write to us: if you like, we’ll add it here.

The rules in short

Every answer, with examples

Which plan for which pattern

Requests from all devices and all users count on the same key. A 30-day month; the plan is the smallest one that fits requests per minute, per month and the radius.

Pattern	Per minute	Per month	Plan
1 device, every 30 s, 15 km around it	2	86,400	Free
3 devices, every 30 s, 15 km	6	259,200	Free
10 devices, every 30 s, 50 km	20	864,000	Starter
90 devices, every 30 s, 15 km	180	7,776,000	Pro
Your server fetches the whole world every 30 s, for any number of users	2	86,400	Pro

Under the limits nothing changes; over them, the request gets an error and isn’t billed. The plans · how to choose.

Where the receivers are

Coverage follows the receivers: where there are many, low-level aircraft show up too. About 3,192 receivers are connected to multilateration; those with a declared position (2,708) split like this, by rough area.

United States 36%

Germany 15%

UK and Ireland 11%

Rest of Europe 16%

Italy 3%

Asia and Middle East 7%

Australia and New Zealand 5%

Canada 5%

Latin America and Africa 2%

Measured on 26 October 2026, 20:24 UTC, worldwide.

A receiver near you improves coverage for everyone: become a feeder.

Building with an AI assistant?

Give your assistant these links

Many people arrive here from ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot. The pages for assistants already say it all: endpoints, fields, limits and these rules. Paste the text below into the conversation and the assistant will write the code the right way, with the key on your server. If you only want to ask about aircraft in a chat, there’s the MCP server.

Paste into the conversation

Use the FlyItalyADSB REST API (base https://api.flyitalyadsb.com/v2, header X-Api-Key).
Docs for agents: https://flyitalyadsb.com/llms.txt
OpenAPI 3.1: https://flyitalyadsb.com/openapi.json
Rules for products: https://flyitalyadsb.com/data/products/using-the-data/
Call the API only from my server, cache the result for all users, use one key for the whole product,
and show "Flight data: FlyItalyADSB (flyitalyadsb.com), CC BY-SA 4.0" where users see the data.