Live · where the network hears vessels

The vessels the network hears, on one chart.

Open AIS feeds and volunteer receivers, gathered on our own server. Free to look at, no account. Each light below is where vessels are heard right now.

Listening for arrivals and departures…
Run a receiver

Dark coasts are not empty. They are unheard.

A receiver near the water lights up its stretch of coast. How far it hears is set by height, as at sea: VHF reaches about to the radio horizon of both antennas.

How far would yours hear?

10 m 25 m
About – nautical miles, in good conditions.
Radio horizon d ≈ 2.23 (√h1 + √h2) nautical miles, heights in metres. Hills, buildings and weather shorten it.

What you need

  • An AIS receiver: a USB radio stick made for AIS, or a dedicated AIS receiver.
  • An antenna for 162 MHz, as high and as clear as you can put it.
  • A small computer that stays on (a Raspberry Pi is enough) and an internet connection.

What you get

  • A page for your station: the vessels it heard, where, its best range and the vessels only it heard.
  • You keep your rights to your data. No exclusivity: feed any other network at the same time, stop whenever you like. Sending data means accepting the station terms: Gangway may use it in its products, including paid ones.
  • The vessels off your coast appear for seafarers and their families.
Feed it into this chart
Gone quiet

Ports we used to hear

Ports where the feeds heard many vessels before and few or none in the last six hours: a receiver there went quiet. One receiver nearby would bring them back.

What is free and what is not

What you can do with it

Free

Look at the live chart, search a vessel or a port.

No account. On the web and in the iPhone app, now in testing.
Free

See where a vessel has been.

Her track for the last 24 hours, where a feed heard her.
Free

Feed your receiver and get a station page.

The feed page, a few minutes.
Not allowed

Copy the data out in bulk, resell it, or build another tracking service on it.

Not without our written agreement. See the terms.
Credits

Each source, under its own licence

The credits we carry, word for word as each source asks
BarentsWatch, Norwegian watersNLOD 2.0Data delivered by BarentsWatch. Contains data under the Norwegian licence for Open Government data (NLOD) distributed by the Norwegian Coastal Administration.
Fintraffic, Finnish watersCC BY 4.0Source: Fintraffic / digitraffic.fi, license CC 4.0 BY
PelyrPelyr Data Licence 2.0AIS data from Pelyr (pelyr.com), Pelyr Data Licence 2.0
aisstream.io, worldwideaisstream.io termsaisstream.io
Volunteer stationsStation termsGangway AIS (gangway.app)
The chartODbL, OpenMapTilesOpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles, data from OpenStreetMap
Vessel type, ISM managerEMSACompany data: EU MRV (EMSA)
Year built, tonnage, port of registry of Canadian vesselsOpen Government Licence - CanadaTransport Canada, Canadian Register of Large Vessels
Owner as filed, entries to Taiwan's portsOpen Government Data License 1.0Maritime and Port Bureau, MOTC (Taiwan)
Sanctions flags, EU vessel listsCommission reuse policySource: EUR-Lex, © European Union
Traffic density in European watersCC BY 4.0EMODnet Human Activities, Vessel Density Map, originator Cogea Srl
Former names we know of, not a full listOur record, EMSA, Wikidata (CC0), OFAC SDN listFormer names: EU MRV (EMSA)
Sea marks, lanes, fairwaysODbL© OpenStreetMap contributors
Some port positionsCC BY 4.0GeoNames (geonames.org), CC BY 4.0, places matched to ports by Gangway
DepthsGEBCO termsGEBCO Compilation Group (2026), GEBCO 2026 Grid
Depths in European watersCC BY 4.0EMODnet Bathymetry, Digital Terrain Model
Coastlines of the depth layerPublic domainNatural Earth, 1:10m land and lakes
Weather, waves, swell and currents: a forecast, not an observation, and not for navigationPublic domain (NOAA open data)Forecast from NOAA GFS 0.25° and GFS-Wave (WAVEWATCH III) 0.25°, via the NOAA Open Data Dissemination programme; surface current from NOAA RTOFS Global 1/12° (ocean currents, no tidal streams), via NOAA NOMADS; drawn by Gangway, not endorsed by NOAA
Currents with the tides in the North Sea, the eastern Channel and the Baltic: a forecast, not for navigationCC BY 4.0DMI (Danish Meteorological Institute) open data, DKSS storm surge model; changed by Gangway: values rounded, carried a few cells to the coast and blended into the global model at the edges
River and harbour currents measured at gauges: the measurement as reported, often provisional; nothing drawn between gaugesPublic domain; DL-DE Zero 2.0; open dataUSGS Water Services and NOAA CO-OPS harbour current meters (US public domain); PEGELONLINE, Wasserstraßen- und Schifffahrtsverwaltung des Bundes (Datenlizenz Deutschland Zero 2.0); Rijkswaterstaat (Dutch government open data); the way downstream from OpenStreetMap's waterways (ODbL)
Server softwareMITWith thanks to Open Water Software for aiscast
Honest limits

Where it falls short

Only where AIS reachesVessels show where a feed hears them, mostly near coasts. Far out at sea there are gaps; each vessel shows when she was last heard.
Some coasts are quietWhere no receiver listens, the chart is dark even when vessels are there.
Reports can be wrongPositions, names and destinations are what the vessels broadcast and some broadcast wrong figures.
Routes are sketchesThe route planner keeps model sea room and traffic lanes and marks in grey what it could not check. It is not a passage plan.
Not for navigationThis chart is for information. It is not an aid to navigation and must never be used as one.