Live ADS-B · every 10 s
What's that plane flying over me?
See every aircraft above you, what it is in plain English, and exactly where to look: “look NE, 35° up.”
Closest aircraft right now
Where are you?
Share your location or choose a city, and we'll point you at the plane overhead.
Sky view: where to look
North is up. Tap a plane to see what it is.
Aircraft nearby
- No location yet. Nearby aircraft will appear here, closest first.
Live map
How it works
Tell us where you are
Use your phone's location, search a city or airport, or tap a spot on the map. Your spot is remembered on this device only.
We pull live ADS-B
Aircraft broadcast their position about once a second. We fetch everything within your radius from the airplanes.live network every 10 seconds.
Look where the arrow points
Each plane gets a compass direction and an angle above the horizon. A fist at arm's length is about 10°, so 35° up is three and a half fists.
What's usually up there?
Over most of the US, the plane you hear is an airliner at cruise altitude or a jet lining up for the nearest big airport. Here's how the usual suspects break down.
Airliners
Boeing 737s, Airbus A320s and their cousins, usually 30,000 to 40,000 ft up.
Regional jets
Smaller twin jets like the Embraer E175 feeding the big hubs.
Business jets
Citations, Challengers and Gulfstreams, often very high and fast.
Helicopters
News, police, medevac and tours, low and often circling.
Military
Tankers, transports and fighters. Some broadcast, some don't.
Small planes
Cessnas, Pipers and Cirrus at a few thousand feet.
Browse 46 aircraft identification guides · How to tell them apart
What's flying over your city?
Every metro has its own rhythm of arrivals, departures and overflights. Open a city to see its live sky, its airports and the traffic you're most likely to spot.
Sky-watching guides
How to identify a plane overhead, step by step
To identify a plane overhead, note which compass direction it is in and how high above the horizon it looks, then open a live ADS-B tool…
7 min readHow ADS-B works: the signal that tells you what's overhead
ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast) is a system in which aircraft use satellite navigation to work out their own position…
7 min readWhy some planes don't show up on the map
A plane you can see may be missing from a live map because it does not broadcast ADS-B, because no receiver near you can hear it (common…
7 min readWhat altitude numbers mean on a flight tracker
The altitude on a flight tracker is usually barometric pressure altitude above mean sea level, not height above your house. Above 18,000…
7 min readAirliner, bizjet, helicopter or military? How to tell what's flying over
You can usually tell what kind of aircraft is overhead from four clues: its size and engine layout, its sound, its altitude and speed,…
6 min readContrails explained: why some planes leave white trails
Contrails are clouds made by aircraft. Hot, humid engine exhaust mixes with very cold air, usually around -40 °C and above roughly 26,000…
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Quick answers
How does the live sky tool work?
Aircraft broadcast their own position, altitude, speed and identity over ADS-B. Volunteer receivers pick up those signals and share them with airplanes.live, a community tracking network. When you open the live sky tool, it uses your location to fetch the aircraft near you, then calculates each one's compass direction, distance and angle above the horizon, so it can tell you something like "look NE, 35° up". Read more in how ADS-B works.
Does the tool need my location?
For the "where to look" directions, yes. Your browser asks for permission, and your location is used in the browser and sent only as coordinates to our API to fetch nearby aircraft. We do not store it. Your last location is saved locally in your own browser so the tool can start faster next time; clearing your site data removes it. You can still browse the map without sharing your location, but bearings and elevation angles need to know where you are.
What's the quickest way to identify the plane I'm looking at?
Note roughly which direction the plane is in and how high it looks (a fist at arm's length is about 10°). Open the live sky tool, then find the aircraft whose direction and angle match. Check that its direction of travel matches too. Our step-by-step guide, how to identify a plane overhead, walks through it with an example.
How often does the data refresh?
The tool refreshes about every 10 seconds. Aircraft send position messages about twice per second, and the network typically has a position within a few seconds of the broadcast, so what you see is close to live. A fast jet can still move a mile or more between refreshes, so it may be slightly ahead of where the tool shows it.
How accurate are the positions?
ADS-B positions come from the aircraft's own GPS and are usually accurate to within tens of metres. The main sources of error are timing (the plane keeps moving between refreshes) and your own phone's location accuracy. Positions calculated by MLAT, for aircraft without ADS-B, are less precise and can lag or jump. For finding a plane in the sky, the direction and angle are almost always close enough.
What does the elevation angle mean?
The elevation angle is how high the plane appears above the horizon: 0° is on the horizon and 90° is straight overhead. At arm's length a closed fist covers about 10° and a spread hand about 20°. Low angles mean distant planes: a jet at cruise 10° above the horizon is more than 30 nautical miles away. See how far away is that plane?
Want the whole sky?
airplanes.live shows every tracked aircraft on Earth, with history and replays.