The best flight trackers, according to hackers
6 flight trackers recommended in Hacker News comments over the past year, ranked by how many separate people recommend each one.
- Most recommendedFlighty42 people recommend it
- Least regretAirloom34 recommend, 4 criticize
- Free and lovedADS-B Exchange8 people recommend it
All flight trackers
- FlightyPeople recommend Flighty for early delay and cancellation alerts, native iOS design, and clear flight data. Common caveats: unreliable data for some airlines and subscription prompts.42recommend
- AirloomPraised as a smooth, striking 3D viewer of live aircraft; critics say it is more a novelty to look at than a practical tool like FlightAware.34recommend
- ADS-B ExchangeShows live aircraft with more data and less filtering than commercial trackers. Critics say it lacks departure and destination airports and some data lags.8recommend
- airplanes.liveFree live map of nearby aircraft with an open API that can be polled once per second, fed by volunteer receivers.6recommend
- Flightradar24Recommended for live flight tracking with a daylight view and map memory. Main caveat: critics expect the paid tier to shift to monthly payments with fewer features.6recommend
- Flight-VizFree browser app that draws thousands of flights on a 3D globe and renders fast. Common caveat: planes are hard to spot and zooming is hard to control.6recommend