ADSB IQ Daily Aircraft Data
ADSB IQ Daily Aircraft Data
ADSB IQ publishes one zstd-compressed Parquet file per UTC day containing append-only aircraft state diffs from its volunteer feeder network. Fields include timestamp, ICAO hex, callsign, position, altitude, speed, track, squawk, aircraft type, snapshot and removal flags plus readsb attributes; no account or token is needed.
Required Attribution:
ADSBiq feeder network
Coverage
Available GitHub releases checked span 2026-06-28 through 2026-10-10, with geographic coverage determined by active ADS-B feeders. The provider states a daily cadence near 06:10 UTC, adaptive trace thinning and a 30-second cruise heartbeat. October files contain roughly 31-37 million rows and are about 489-616 MB each.
Verdict
A high-volume movement signal for tracking observed aircraft, traffic density, routes and airport activity. Rows are sparse state changes rather than complete observations, so reconstruct state by forward-filling per ICAO hex in timestamp order and honor removal markers. Coverage depends on receiver geography, signal reception and aircraft broadcasts; it is not a complete global flight ledger. The public page says daily, but on 2026-11-01 the latest release asset was dated 2026-10-10, so freshness must be checked before use.
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Use in your agent
Load one ADSB IQ aircraft day into pandas and Parquet. Checked against the provider's documentation on Nov 1, 2026.
Access
- No account, token or API key for GitHub release assets.
- This example uses the smallest published day, 2026-06-28, a 13 MB compressed Parquet file.
Request
curl -LO 'https://github.com/Sky-Power-Services/adsbiq-data/releases/download/2026-06/aircraft_diffs_2026-06-28.parquet'Format
Zstd Parquet of timestamped sparse aircraft state diffs with identity, position, motion, quality, snapshot and removal fields.
Load into pandas and Parquet
Needs Python 3 with requests, pandas and pyarrow.
"""One ADSB IQ aircraft day, core columns -> pandas -> Parquet. No key."""
import io
import requests
import pandas as pd
URL = "https://github.com/Sky-Power-Services/adsbiq-data/releases/download/2026-06/aircraft_diffs_2026-06-28.parquet"
r = requests.get(URL, timeout=120)
r.raise_for_status()
df = pd.read_parquet(io.BytesIO(r.content), columns=["ts", "hex", "is_snapshot", "is_removed", "flight", "lat", "lon", "alt_baro", "gs", "track"])
df.to_parquet("adsbiq_2026_06_28_core.parquet", index=False)
times = pd.to_datetime(df["ts"], utc=True)
print(len(df), "state rows", df["hex"].nunique(), "aircraft", times.min().isoformat(), "to", times.max().isoformat())Run by us on 2026-11-01 (python 3.13.5 | pandas 3.1.0 | pyarrow 26.0.0 | requests 2.34.2). Result: 1384160 state rows 7622 aircraft 2026-06-28T00:00:00.744000+00:00 to 2026-06-28T23:59:59.592000+00:00
Limits
- Daily-file rate limit: Not stated; the data page says no rate limit.
- Recent daily files are roughly 0.5-0.6 GB compressed and contain tens of millions of rows.
- One GitHub release holds the assets for each UTC month.
Quirks
- Non-snapshot rows populate only changed fields; forward-fill within each hex after sorting by ts.
- is_removed marks an aircraft leaving coverage and should terminate carried state until a later snapshot.
- Files use adaptive thinning rather than raw one-second observations, and straight cruise gets a heartbeat at least every 30 seconds.
Terms and attribution
- The database is ODbL 1.0.
- Use the provider's stated attribution: ADSBiq feeder network.
Sources
- https://adsbiq.com/data: “Open to all: no account, no token, no rate limit.”
- https://adsbiq.com/data: “Cadence: daily, ~06:10 UTC (after the prior day finalizes).”
- https://github.com/Sky-Power-Services/adsbiq-data: “Rows are time-ordered state changes, not full snapshots every tick”
- https://github.com/Sky-Power-Services/adsbiq-data: “Open Database License (ODbL-1.0). Attribution: "ADSBiq feeder network".”
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