ADS-B Exchange
Unfiltered flight tracking network with REST APIs for accessing real-time aircraft positions, military flights, and global ADS-B flight data without filtering. Operated by a crowdsourced global network of ADS-B and MLAT receivers providing ultra-low-latency aircraft tracking data for aviation research and applications.
Real signal across most facets with visible, nameable gaps — the contract exists but is thin, or the portal is good while governance and commercial terms are absent.
API Evangelist profiles ADS-B Exchange the way a machine reads it — 73 machine-readable artifacts across 5 APIs, pulled from the provider's own public surface and indexed so a developer, an analyst, or an AI agent can evaluate it against every other provider on the network.
Every provider in the network is reduced to the same set of machine-readable artifacts — OpenAPI contracts, event specifications, GraphQL schemas, runnable collections, pricing and rate-limit signals, security posture, OAuth scopes, and the agent surfaces (MCP servers and skills) that let software drive the API on its own. We profile them because the interface is the part of a company you can actually inspect: it is a truer signal of what a provider does than any marketing page. From those artifacts we compute the Kin Score — ADS-B Exchange scores 54.6/100 (developing), with a separate agent-readiness read of 48/100 (agent ready). The full breakdown is below, followed by every artifact we hold — each card links through to its machine-readable definition on apis.io.
Kin Score
This is the API Evangelist rating — a single, repeatable read computed from the artifacts on this page. Green fill is points earned; the red track is points possible, so every bar shows earned-versus-possible at a glance.
Kin Score
How this is scored →scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5
How we profile ADS-B Exchange
Each block below is one kind of artifact we hold for ADS-B Exchange. For each we say what it is and why it earns a place in the profile, then list every one we've indexed — capped at two rows, scroll within the panel for the rest.
APIs 5
Each API is captured as its own OpenAPI definition — every operation, parameter, and response. This is the single most useful machine-readable description of what an API does, and it's what lets us score, lint, mock, and generate against it without asking the provider for anything.
Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.
ADS-B Exchange Geopolitical Filtering API
Allows filtering live data based on geopolitical boundaries, such as states/provinces, countries, regions, or even continents. All endpoints support ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country c...
ADS-B Exchange Geospatial Filtering API
Endpoints allow filtering live data based on geospatial boundaries, such as latitude, longitude, altitudes, or even custom GeoJSON shapes. Use these endpoints to get information...
ADS-B Exchange Live Positional Data API
Endpoints provide access to airborne or recently landed aircraft, as well as last known positions. Use these endpoints to get information about aircraft, such as location, fligh...
ADS-B Exchange Operations API
Endpoints provide access to Takeoffs/Landings operational events.
ADS-B Exchange Traces API
Endpoints provide access to historical trace files for an aircraft.
Pricing Plans 1
Pricing is part of the interface. Machine-readable plans tell you what a tier costs and includes before you commit — one of the six things the Kin Score reads for commercial clarity.
Published pricing tiers and plan structures.
Plans
PLANSRate Limits 1
Rate limits are the difference between a demo that works and a production integration that doesn't fall over. Publishing them is an operational-transparency signal — and a hard requirement for any agent that plans its own throughput.
Documented rate limits and quota policies.
Rate Limits
RATE LIMITSFinOps 1
Cost, billing, and metering signals let a buyer model the financial operations of an API before it's live. We profile them for the same reason we profile pricing: the money is part of the contract.
Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.
Finops
FINOPSSemantic Vocabularies 1
JSON-LD contexts give the data shared meaning across APIs. We profile them because semantics are what let a machine reconcile 'customer' here with 'customer' somewhere else.
JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.
context Context
JSON-LDSpectral Rules 1
Governance rulesets we run against this provider's specs — the automated checks behind parts of the score. Profiling them makes the quality bar explicit and re-runnable, not a matter of opinion.
ADS-B Exchange API Rules
SPECTRALJSON Schema 30
Standalone JSON Schema definitions describe the data models behind the API. We profile them so the shapes are validatable on their own — useful long after a single request is forgotten.
Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.
AcasResolutionAdvisoryResponse
JSON SCHEMAAircraftCollectionMinimalResponse
JSON SCHEMAAircraftCollectionResponse
JSON SCHEMAAircraftRequest
JSON SCHEMAAircraftSingleMinimalResponse
JSON SCHEMAAircraftSingleResponse
JSON SCHEMAAirportRequest
JSON SCHEMAApiForbiddenResponse
JSON SCHEMAApiTooManyRequestsResponse
JSON SCHEMAApiUnauthorizedResponse
JSON SCHEMABadRequest
JSON SCHEMAFeatureCollectionRequest
JSON SCHEMAFeatureGeometryRequest
JSON SCHEMAFeatureRequest
JSON SCHEMAFilterDefinition
JSON SCHEMAFilterRequest
JSON SCHEMAGeoboundaryCountrySubdivision
JSON SCHEMAGeoboundaryCountrySubdivisionsResponse
JSON SCHEMALastPositionDataResponse
JSON SCHEMAOperationsAirportRequest
JSON SCHEMAOperationsIcaosRequest
JSON SCHEMAOperationsResponse
JSON SCHEMAOperationsResponseItem
JSON SCHEMAProblemDetails
JSON SCHEMAProximityPointFilter
JSON SCHEMAProximityRequest
JSON SCHEMARegistrationRequest
JSON SCHEMARequestedUrlTooLongResponse
JSON SCHEMATraceNotFoundResponse
JSON SCHEMATraceResponse
JSON SCHEMAScroll within the panel for all 30 ·
Examples 30
Real request and response payloads are what turn a spec from abstract into obvious — and they're one of the twelve things an agent needs to call an API correctly on the first try.
Example request and response payloads for these APIs.
Getapiaircraftv2Airport
EXAMPLEGetapiaircraftv2All
EXAMPLEGetapiaircraftv2Callsign
EXAMPLEGetapiaircraftv2Hex
EXAMPLEGetapiaircraftv2Icao
EXAMPLEGetapiaircraftv2Latlondist
EXAMPLEGetapiaircraftv2Mil
EXAMPLEGetapiaircraftv2Registration
EXAMPLEGetapiaircraftv2Sqk
EXAMPLEGetapiaircraftv2Traces
EXAMPLEPostapiaircraftv2Airport
EXAMPLEPostapiaircraftv2Filter
EXAMPLEPostapiaircraftv2Hex
EXAMPLEPostapiaircraftv2Icao
EXAMPLEScroll within the panel for all 30 ·
Security Posture 2
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals — the evidence that a provider takes security seriously enough to document it. We profile it because you can't govern what you can't see.
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.
Agentic Access 1
An x-agentic-access contract marks which operations are safe for an agent to run on its own and which need a human in the loop. It is the difference between an API an agent can use and one it can use safely.
Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.
Resources
Every other property we hold for ADS-B Exchange — documentation, portals, status pages, policies, and corporate surface — grouped by the job it does, following the integrator's arc from getting started to running in production.
Documentation 1
Reference material describing how the API behaves
Agent Surfaces 1
MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs
Access & Security 2
Authentication, authorization, and security posture
Operate 1
Status, limits, changes, and where to get help
Commercial 3
Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use
Company 1
The organization behind the API
Other 3
Properties that don't map to a standard resource type
← All providers · Data indexed from github.com/api-evangelist/adsbexchange · machine-readable index on apis.io