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🛩 ADSB.lol Live Flights Scraper

🚀 Track live aircraft in seconds. A single radius query around London Heathrow returned 91 airborne aircraft with registration, type, altitude, and speed in one run.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-06-04 · 📊 23 fields per record · Global coverage · Live snapshot from the ADSB.lol community network

ADSB.lol is a community driven, ad free, filter free aggregator of ADS-B aircraft transponder data. This Actor turns its public API into clean structured records of the aircraft flying right now. Point it at any location, look up a specific flight by callsign or ICAO hex, watch a transponder squawk, or pull the live military feed.

Every result is a live snapshot. Aircraft positions, altitudes, and speeds reflect the moment the query runs, so two runs a minute apart will return a different fleet over the same area.

📋 What the ADSB.lol Live Flights Scraper does

This Actor queries the ADSB.lol v2 API and returns one record per aircraft currently reported by the network. It supports five search modes:

• Near a location using a latitude, longitude, and radius in nautical miles.
• By callsign to follow a specific flight such as KLM701.
• By ICAO hex to look up an airframe by its 24 bit transponder address.
• By squawk code to find every aircraft squawking a code such as 7700.
• Military feed to pull aircraft flagged as military by the network.

For each aircraft you get its callsign, registration, ICAO hex, aircraft type, category, emergency state, squawk, barometric and geometric altitude, ground speed, track, vertical rate, selected altitude, latitude, longitude, distance and bearing from your search point, signal age, and signal strength.

🎬 Full Demo (🚧 Coming soon)

⚙️ Input

Example 1. Aircraft near London Heathrow:

{
"searchMode":"radius",
"lat":"51.47",
"lon":"-0.45",
"dist":50,
"maxItems":50
}

Example 2. Every aircraft squawking the emergency code 7700:

{
"searchMode":"squawk",
"squawk":"7700",
"maxItems":50
}

⚠️ Good to Know: results are a live snapshot. The set of aircraft returned depends entirely on what is airborne and reporting at query time, so a busy hub returns dozens of records while a quiet rural point may return only a few.

📊 Output

Real sample records from a radius run near London Heathrow:

{
"callsign":"HLE56",
"registration":"G-HIOW",
"hex":"406ec5",
"type":"EC35",
"category":"A1",
"emergency":"none",
"squawk":"0020",
"altBaro":1050,
"altGeom":800,
"groundSpeed":117.9,
"track":100.26,
"baroRate":-192,
"navAltitudeMcp":null,
"lat":50.965302,
"lon":-1.359781,
"distanceNm":45.681,
"bearing":228.8,
"seen":0,
"rssi":-10.3,
"searchMode":"radius",
"sourceUrl":"https://api.adsb.lol/v2/lat/51.47/lon/-0.45/dist/50",
"scrapedAt":"2026-06-04T20:10:35.929Z",
"error":null
}

{
"callsign":"KLM701",
"registration":"PH-BQB",
"hex":"484369",
"type":"B772",
"category":"A5",
"emergency":"none",
"squawk":"2114",
"altBaro":30000,
"altGeom":29850,
"groundSpeed":461.1,
"track":255.81,
"baroRate":0,
"navAltitudeMcp":30016,
"lat":50.972672,
"lon":-1.233215,
"distanceNm":41.87,
"bearing":224.9,
"seen":0,
"rssi":-16.2,
"searchMode":"radius",
"sourceUrl":"https://api.adsb.lol/v2/lat/51.47/lon/-0.45/dist/50",
"scrapedAt":"2026-06-04T20:10:36.003Z",
"error":null
}

{
"callsign":"EJU56EW",
"registration":"OE-LQS",
"hex":"440735",
"type":"A319",
"category":"A3",
"emergency":"none",
"squawk":"5240",
"altBaro":39025,
"altGeom":39000,
"groundSpeed":475.9,
"track":152.47,
"baroRate":0,
"navAltitudeMcp":39008,
"lat":51.604797,
"lon":-1.210946,
"distanceNm":29.534,
"bearing":286.3,
"seen":0,
"rssi":-4.1,
"searchMode":"radius",
"sourceUrl":"https://api.adsb.lol/v2/lat/51.47/lon/-0.45/dist/50",
"scrapedAt":"2026-06-04T20:10:36.031Z",
"error":null
}

✨ Why choose this Actor

• Five search modes cover location, callsign, hex, squawk, and military in one tool.
• No API key and no account on ADSB.lol are needed. The network is open and community run.
• Rich per aircraft detail with 23 fields including altitude, speed, heading, and position.
• Honest field handling. Fields that the network does not report for a given aircraft are left empty rather than faked.

📈 How it compares to alternatives

🚀 How to use

1. Create a free Apify account through this sign up link.
2. Open the ADSB.lol Live Flights Scraper in the Apify Console.
3. Pick a search mode and fill in the matching fields, for example a latitude, longitude, and radius.
4. Click Start and let the Actor query the network.
5. Browse the results in the dataset and connect them to your own tools.

💼 Business use cases

Airspace and traffic analysis

Operations and ground awareness

Product and dashboard development

Research and OSINT

🔌 Automating ADSB.lol Live Flights Scraper

Connect this Actor to the tools you already use:

• Make and Zapier to trigger downstream workflows when a run finishes.
• Slack to post new aircraft of interest to a channel.
• Airbyte to load results into a warehouse.
• GitHub Actions to run scheduled snapshots.
• Google Drive to archive each run for later analysis.

🌟 Beyond business use cases

• Research. Study how traffic patterns shift by hour, day, and weather.
• Personal. Identify the plane passing over your house by its hex and registration.
• Non-profit. Support noise monitoring or community aviation projects.
• Experimentation. Prototype a tracking app without standing up your own receiver.

🤖 Ask an AI assistant

Paste a dataset record into ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or Microsoft Copilot and ask it to decode the aircraft type, summarize the fleet over your area, or flag unusual squawks.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Is an ADSB.lol API key required? No. ADSB.lol is open and community run, so no key or account on their side is needed.

How fresh is the data? Every record is a live snapshot taken when the run executes. The seen field shows how many seconds ago each aircraft was last heard.

Why do two runs over the same area return different aircraft? Because aircraft are constantly moving in and out of the area and reporting at different moments. This is expected for live data.

What does the radius mode cover? It returns aircraft within the given number of nautical miles of your latitude and longitude, up to 250 nautical miles.

Why is registration or squawk empty on some aircraft? The network does not always receive every field from every transponder. Missing values are left empty rather than guessed.

What does altBaro of ground mean? The aircraft is reporting that it is on the ground rather than at a numeric altitude.

Can I look up a single aircraft? Yes. Use callsign mode for a flight callsign or icao mode for a 24 bit hex address.

What is a squawk code? A four digit transponder code. Some codes are special, such as 7700 for a general emergency.

How many aircraft can a radius query return? A busy hub can return dozens to over a hundred. A quiet area may return only a handful.

Does free usage have a limit? Free users receive up to 10 items per run. Paid users can request up to 1,000,000.

Is this affiliated with ADSB.lol? No. This is an independent tool that reads the public ADSB.lol API.

What coverage does the network have? Coverage is global but depends on volunteer receivers, so it is denser over populated regions with many contributors.

🔌 Integrate with any app

Results are available through the Apify API and dataset endpoints, so you can pull them into spreadsheets, databases, maps, or any service that speaks HTTP.

🔗 Recommended Actors

• OpenSky Flights Scraper
• OpenSky Network Scraper
• FlightAware Public Tracker Scraper
• Flightradar24 Live Flights Scraper
• OurAirports Scraper

💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection.

🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form

⚠️ Disclaimer: independent tool, not affiliated with ADSB.lol. Only publicly available data collected.