Best Flight Tracking Websites and Apps in 2026

The best flight tracking app for most people is Flightradar24, thanks to its map, its replay tool and a cheap entry plan. FlightAware is the stronger pick when you mostly want delay and gate alerts for free, and ADS-B Exchange is the one to open when a military tanker or a corporate jet has gone missing from the other maps. Plane Finder and AirNav Radar fill smaller niches at lower prices.

Free vs paid: $0 to about $500 a year

All five trackers work without paying a cent. Money buys you three things: no ads, a longer history window and extra map layers such as weather, airport boards or 3D views. Buying through the iOS or Android store often costs a dollar or two more than the website, and annual billing is always the cheaper way in.

Tracker	Free tier	Entry paid plan	Top consumer or pro plan
Flightradar24	Ads, 7 days of history	Silver: $2.99/mo or $14.99/yr, 90 days	Business: $49.99/mo or $499.99/yr, 3 years
FlightAware	Basic account, a handful of alerts	Premium, billed monthly	Enterprise: $99.95/mo, up to 8 months
ADS-B Exchange	Full map with ads	Ad-free: $29.95/yr	Replay back to March 2020 included
Plane Finder	Free app with ads	Premium: $3.49/mo or $19.99/yr	Same plan
AirNav Radar	Free map with ads	Spotter: $24.50/yr	Pilot $79.50/yr, Business $399.50/yr

Gold on Flightradar24 sits between Silver and Business at $6.49 a month or $34.99 a year, with 365 days of history plus weather and aeronautical layers. For a casual traveler that is already more than enough.

Flightradar24 for the live map and playback

Flightradar24 draws the cleanest map of the bunch and it stays readable even over a busy hub like the New York area at rush hour. Tap an aircraft and you get the type, registration, photo, route, altitude, ground speed and squawk. The playback tool replays any airspace for a chosen time slot, which is how most people end up watching a go-around or a diversion they read about that morning.

The free tier has two annoyances: ads and a session timeout that freezes the map after a while. Silver removes both and stretches history to 90 days. I keep a Gold subscription because the weather radar overlay and the airport arrival boards save me from switching tabs.

FlightAware for alerts and US flight status

FlightAware is built around flight status more than map candy. Its alerts are the main reason travelers install it: departure, delay, gate change, diversion and arrival notifications, often pushed before the airline’s own app gets around to it. For flights inside the United States, FlightAware blends ADS-B with FAA data, so a scheduled flight shows up with a filed route and an estimated time well before the aircraft moves.

The map is fine but less polished than Flightradar24’s. Premium plans add more alerts and longer history, while the Enterprise tier, aimed at aviation businesses, lists at $99.95 a month. Private and Part 91 pilots get real value from the tail number pages: every flight an aircraft has logged in the system, with altitudes and speeds.

That split is how I run my own browser: FlightAware open for alerts on anyone I am picking up, Flightradar24 for the map. The two apps rarely disagree by more than a minute on arrival times, but FlightAware tends to post the gate first.

ADS-B Exchange for unfiltered traffic

Commercial trackers honor block requests from aircraft owners and government agencies. ADS-B Exchange does not filter what its volunteer receivers pick up, so military transports, government jets and privately owned aircraft enrolled in the FAA’s display-limiting programs often appear here when they vanish elsewhere. Since its sale to JETNET in 2023 it has kept that promise of unfiltered data, along with a free map paid for by ads.

The interface looks like a tool built by and for hobbyists, which it is. Filters by type, altitude and military status are powerful once you learn them. The $29.95 annual ad-free plan adds satellite imagery, weather radar and the replay archive.

Plane Finder and AirNav Radar as alternatives

Plane Finder has been around since the early iPhone years and still has one of the nicest 3D views on mobile. Its premium plan is cheap, and the app feels lighter than Flightradar24 on older phones. The catch is a smaller receiver network, which shows in remote regions. Over the big US hubs the difference is hard to notice; over the Rockies or the Alaska interior, low traffic sometimes drops off its map minutes before it does on Flightradar24.

AirNav Radar is the current name of RadarBox. Its coverage is good in Europe, Asia and South America, and the annual pricing is easy to read: Spotter for hobbyists, Pilot for people who fly, Business for operators. Every plan starts with a 7-day free trial, so you can test it on a trip before paying.

Coverage, history and why some aircraft are missing

Every tracker on the list depends mostly on ADS-B, the position broadcast that most aircraft send once a second. Ground receivers pick it up within line of sight, which means roughly 150 to 250 nautical miles for an airliner at cruise and much less for a Cessna at 2,500 feet. Over oceans and deserts, the gaps get filled by satellite data or by estimated positions, often shown with a different icon or a dotted track.

A missing aircraft is usually one of four things:

• It is flying low in an area with no receiver nearby.
• Its owner asked the FAA to limit public display of the tail number.
• It uses a temporary privacy address instead of its permanent one.
• It is a military or government flight with ADS-B switched off.

History length matters more than people expect. Seven free days on Flightradar24 cover yesterday’s diversion; they do not cover the airshow you went to last spring. If you look up old flights for plane spotting logs or for a logbook cross-check, budget for a plan with at least 90 days.

Free premium accounts for ADS-B feeders

All the big networks want more receivers, and they pay for them with subscriptions. Host a receiver, usually a Raspberry Pi with a USB dongle and an antenna in a window or on the roof, and you get:

• Flightradar24: a free Business plan, valued at $499.99 a year.
• FlightAware: a free Enterprise account, listed at $99.95 a month.
• AirNav Radar: an automatic upgrade to Business.
• ADS-B Exchange: the ad-free map at no cost.

The same receiver can feed several networks at once. A basic setup costs around $100 in parts, so it pays for itself in a few months if you would otherwise buy a Business tier. Software images from FlightAware and Flightradar24 do most of the configuration, and a weekend afternoon is plenty for a first build. I would start with whichever network gives the perk you actually want, then add the others once the receiver has run a week without hiccups.

Picking a tracker by the way you use it

• Picking up family at the airport: FlightAware free alerts, nothing else needed.
• Frequent business traveler: FlightAware alerts plus Flightradar24 Silver for the map.
• Avgeek or spotter at the fence: Flightradar24 Gold for arrivals boards and replays, ADS-B Exchange for the oddballs.
• Private pilot: FlightAware tail number pages to review your own flights, Flightradar24 playback to replay a practice area session.
• Military and bizjet watcher: ADS-B Exchange, possibly with your own feeder.
• Tight budget on an old phone: Plane Finder premium at under $20 a year.

Pair any of them with LiveATC and you hear the controller clear the same jet you are watching on the map, a combination that turns a quiet evening into a decent lesson in how a busy approach works.