adsb.lol Open Flight Data
adsb.lol Open Flight Data
adsb.lol is a community ADS-B network that publishes unfiltered aircraft positions through a free JSON API and daily gzip-compressed JSON archives. API queries cover aircraft by ICAO hex, registration, callsign, type, squawk, military or privacy-address status, and proximity to a point; daily GitHub releases contain per-aircraft traces and replay heatmaps. No account is needed for the public API or archive.
Required Attribution:
Attribute adsb.lol and identify the ODbL 1.0 licence when publicly using or redistributing the database.
Coverage
Worldwide volunteer-receiver observations of aircraft transponder messages, including broadcast and multilaterated positions where available. Granularity: live aircraft snapshots and per-aircraft trace points; fields can include identity, altitude, speed, track, vertical rate, position, signal quality and observation age. The archive adds one release per day and retained 1,378 days on 2026-11-04. Live delay: the provider says no delay is added. Receiver coverage and field completeness vary geographically.
Verdict
This is a live and historical aviation-movement signal for monitoring airports, routes, diversions, emergencies and selected aircraft populations. It is receiver-derived observational data: coverage gaps, multilateration uncertainty, stale positions and identity mismatches are possible, so use observation ages and quality fields. The public data is ODbL 1.0; attribution and share-alike obligations can apply to redistributed databases or produced works.
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Use in your agent
Load live adsb.lol military aircraft into pandas and Parquet. Checked against the provider's documentation on Nov 4, 2026.
Access
- No account or key for the public v2 API.
- Daily historical traces are separate GitHub releases.
Request
curl 'https://api.adsb.lol/v2/mil'Format
JSON with an ac aircraft array and message metadata; fields can include identity, altitude, speed, track, position, quality and observation age.
Load into pandas and Parquet
Needs Python 3 with requests, pandas and pyarrow.
"""Live adsb.lol military aircraft -> pandas -> Parquet. No key."""
import json
import requests
import pandas as pd
URL = "https://api.adsb.lol/v2/mil"
r = requests.get(URL, timeout=60)
r.raise_for_status()
payload = r.json()
df = pd.json_normalize(payload.get("ac", []), sep=".")
for col in df.select_dtypes(include="object"):
df[col] = df[col].map(lambda x: json.dumps(x, sort_keys=True) if isinstance(x, (list, dict)) else str(x) if x is not None else None)
df.to_parquet("adsb_lol_military_live.parquet", index=False)
with_pos = int((df["lat"].notna() & df["lon"].notna()).sum()) if len(df) and "lat" in df and "lon" in df else 0
print(len(df), "military aircraft;", with_pos, "with positions; message", payload.get("msg"))Run by us on 2026-11-04 (python 3.13.5 | pandas 3.1.0 | pyarrow 26.0.0 | requests 2.34.2). Result: 443 military aircraft; 328 with positions; message No error
Limits
- Public API rate limit: Not stated.
- Keys may be required in the future; production users are asked to make contact.
Quirks
- The snapshot changes on every request.
- Coverage and identity fields can be incomplete.
- Use seen and seen_pos to reject stale observations.
Terms and attribution
- The API and public data are ODbL 1.0.
- Attribution and share-alike obligations can apply.
Sources
- https://api.adsb.lol/docs: “The license for the API as well as all data ADSB.lol makes public is ODbL.”
- https://www.adsb.lol/docs/open-data/historical: “one release = one day of the whole sky, as gzip-compressed JSON written by readsb.”
Information and education only. Not financial, investment, legal or tax advice. Listings can be inaccurate, incomplete or out of date and are provided "as is". Free tiers, limits and licenses belong to each provider and can change, so check the provider's own terms before you rely on them. Terms & Disclaimer