ADS-B Exchange API alternatives in 2026

ADS-B Exchange’s Community API is sold for non-commercial use, and its live products for operations are priced on request. Flight Data allows commercial use on every plan from €5 a month, with the route, flight phase, operator and type joined onto every aircraft.

Every provider checked on its own pages on 8 October 2026.

The alternatives at a glance

Flight Data — from €5/month billed yearly. Live positions with the observed route, flight phase, operator and type on one object; billed per call; live push and commercial use on every plan. Opening from its waitlist.
adsb.lol — free under the ODbL; radius queries up to 250 nm; the route is a separate call.
airplanes.live — free; radius queries up to 250 nm; no routes; terms not stated.
adsb.fi — free, one request a second, personal and non-commercial use only; no routes.
OpenSky Network — free for research and personal use, a written licence for anything commercial; departures and arrivals the next day. Compared

All of them side by side: flight data APIs compared.

Flight Data and the ADS-B Exchange API side by side

	ADS-B Exchange Community API	Flight Data
Entry plan	Basic on RapidAPI, $10/month: 10,000 requests, then $0.0015 each, plus bandwidth over 10 GB	Hobby, €5/month billed yearly: 25,000 calls a day
Commercial use	No — built for non-commercial use; enterprise products on request	Included on every plan
What you pay for	Requests and bandwidth	Calls only
Route on the live position	Not stated for the Community API	Observed origin and destination with a confidence
Flight phase, operator, type	Not stated for the Community API	Joined on every aircraft
Live push	Enterprise products, on request	On every plan: one area every 5 s on Hobby, the whole world every 5 s on Pro
Free plan	No	No, a 14-day trial on every plan

ADS-B Exchange prices in US dollars, ours in euros before VAT. Flight Data opens from the waitlist; its prices may change until launch.

Where the difference shows

From hobby to product without changing API

A tracker that starts on a desk often ends up in a shop window, an app or a client’s office. On Flight Data the plan you start with already allows that, and moving up a plan changes the quota, not the licence.

More than the raw broadcast

An ADS-B feed hands on what aircraft broadcast: position, altitude, speed, callsign. Flight Data adds where the aircraft is going and how sure that is, whether it is climbing, cruising or descending, the airline behind the callsign and the ICAO type — already joined. What an ADS-B API with routes returns

When ADS-B Exchange is the better choice

Sub-second operations data. ADS-B Exchange’s enterprise products update positions every 250 ms; Flight Data’s fastest stream is every second, on Enterprise.
Its own network. Flight Data comes from ground receivers — around 6,000 aircraft at any moment, densest over Europe, with no satellite and no MLAT.
You need it today. Flight Data is opening from its waitlist.

Early means three months free.

Waitlist offer: three months free with yearly billing, and 10 % off Developer or 20 % off Pro for as long as you keep the plan.