The open AIS network.
Track ship traffic in real time, or contribute coverage from your receiver.
- Vessels
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- Msg / s
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- Stations
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Track your fleet
Follow the boats you care about by MMSI or IMO number, wherever they are in the world. See where each one is now, where it’s headed and when it should arrive, and look back over a year of where it’s been.
Subscribe by MMSI →
Monitor your waters
Pick a harbor, a strait, or a stretch of coast and see every vessel in it as it moves. Watch ships arrive and leave, spot who’s sitting at anchor or tied up, and know the moment something new shows up.
Subscribe by area →
Analyze marine activity
Every report tells you the vessel, its position, speed, and heading, and which receiver heard it. Keep them all, add names, sizes, flags, destinations, and registry details, and answer your own questions about who passes, when, and how often.
Event fields →
A network that grows with every receiver.
Government feeds, partner aggregates, and volunteer receivers all land in one deduplicated stream. Every station that joins adds vessels nobody else hears and fresher positions where the rest of the network is a minute behind.
Unique Vessels
- Unique vessels in the last 24 hours
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- Unique vessels in the last 7 days
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- Unique vessels in the last 30 days
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- Contributor stations
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- Median latency
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- Uptime, 30 days
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Share what you hear. Take the data with you.
Your receiver fills in part of the coast. Other receivers fill in theirs. aiscast, the Open Waters AIS network, brings those receptions together with public feeds so everyone can see more.
Share what you hear without giving Open Waters exclusive control. Keep feeding other networks, keep a copy, and build on the data yourself.
Connect your receiverNo receiver yet? Get started from shore with a USB receiver, an antenna, and the computer you already own.
Your receiver
And other volunteers
Public feeds
Each with its own license
Open Waters
Combine receptions. Remove duplicates. Keep the source.
You and everyone else
Live map, apps, research, and your own saved feed
Federation between independent nodes
Built to outlive one operator
Save the live feed today, within your access limits. Public archive downloads are coming, so you will be able to retrieve historical data too. Federation already lets independently operated nodes exchange data; the open licenses let others build on it and continue operating the network.
You can stop contributing whenever you want. Receptions already released remain open; Open Waters gets no exclusive license, even if the project changes hands. Read the contributor agreement for the commitment behind this.
Open access
No account, no key, no receiver required. Open the WebSocket and read. Run a receiver and your limits go up.
Access and limits →Open-source software
The server is aiscast, MIT licensed. Read it, change it, run your own.
Source code →Openly licensed contributions
Every source keeps its own license, and every event names its source so you can credit it.
Licenses →
License
Licensing is per source, and the aggregate is not relicensed: each event is re-served under the terms of the source it came from, which is why source is on every event and every vessel. If you display or redistribute the data, carry the source's attribution through.
| Source | License | What you must do |
|---|---|---|
| Kystverket | NLOD 2.0 | Credit: “Contains data under the Norwegian licence for Open Government data (NLOD) distributed by the Norwegian Coastal Administration.” NLOD is not sublicensable: you are bound by it directly. |
| BarentsWatch | NLOD 2.0 | Credit: “Data delivered by BarentsWatch”. NLOD is not sublicensable: you are bound by it directly. |
| Fintraffic Digitraffic | CC BY 4.0 | Credit: “Source: Fintraffic / digitraffic.fi, license CC 4.0 BY.” |
| Volunteer receivers | CC0 1.0 | Receptions are dedicated to the public domain under the contributor agreement; no attribution required. The aggregate database is published under ODbL. |
| AISHub | AISHub membership | Credit AISHub contributors with a link to aishub.net; every event carries source: aishub. Reuse and redistribution follow AISHub’s terms and any applicable written agreement. |
| aisstream.io | no published terms | Best effort. source: aisstream. |
The server, viewer, and plugin are MIT. The full position on licensing, privacy, and how the project funds itself without relicensing data is in the data policy.
Questions
Is Open Waters AIS free?
Personal use is free. Read the live stream with no account and no key. Get a free personal token when you outgrow the anonymous limits. Qualifying receiver contributors get higher limits. Contact us about commercial access for products and businesses.
How does coverage compare to aisstream.io?
Terrestrial coverage is strongest in the Nordics and wherever our volunteers run receivers. Elsewhere positions come from partner aggregates and run about a minute behind. Open Waters AIS also reads aisstream.io as an upstream when it is available. Check your own waters on the live map and the current delay on the network page.
How fresh are the positions?
Government feeds and volunteer receivers stream positions as they are heard. Positions from AISHub are a periodic snapshot and run about a minute behind. The network page shows the current delay for each source.
Do I need an account or an API key?
No account is required. The /v1/stream WebSocket accepts anonymous subscriptions without a token. The aisstream-compatible /v0/stream endpoint requires an Open Waters token as APIKey. Generate a token in your browser with no account or email; it never expires.
Can I switch from aisstream.io without rewriting my client?
The /v0/stream endpoint accepts aisstream.io's subscription format. Point your client at wss://ais.openwaters.io/v0/stream and use an Open Waters token as APIKey. Check the access limits before switching; vessel coverage and source terms can differ.
Can I use the data commercially?
Qualifying receiver contributors can use the service commercially within contributor limits. For other commercial access, contact us to confirm the service tier and source terms for your product. Licensing is per source, and the aggregate is not relicensed. If you display or redistribute the data, carry the source's attribution through. The license table on this page lists each source's terms.
See access limits, check the network's current coverage and delays, or contact us about commercial access.
Track ship traffic, or help others see it.
No account to read. One output line to contribute.
Vessels · API docs · Coverage and sources · Contributor agreement · Data licenses · Privacy · Status · Source code · hello@openwaters.io