Flightradar24 Flight Tracker

Review by eFreeware

Anyone who has stood at an airport window or in a backyard watching a plane cross overhead has probably wondered the same two things: where it came from and where it is going. Answering that used to mean guesswork, a scanner or a website that only covered certain regions. Flightradar24, from Flightradar24 AB, is built to answer it on a phone instead, by placing aircraft on a live map and letting you dig into the details behind each one.

The app sits in the Travel & Local category, is free to download and has been around long enough to become the default reference point for this sort of thing. It has more than 100 million installs and a 4.5 average from 658,006 ratings, numbers that suggest a lot of people keep it installed rather than trying it once. It also carries ads and offers in-app purchases, so the free download is not the whole story, and I will come back to that.

A live map, and the details behind each plane

The core of the app is a map of the world with aircraft moving across it as their positions update. You can watch traffic flow along busy corridors, follow a single flight from departure to arrival, or simply pan around to see what is in the air near you. Tapping a plane opens its details, which the developer lists as route, estimated arrival time, actual departure time, aircraft type, speed and altitude, along with high-resolution photos of the actual aircraft rather than a generic stock image.

Search is handled by flight number, airport or airline, which is the practical way in when you are tracking one specific trip. If you would rather browse than search, filters let you narrow the map by airline, aircraft type, altitude and speed, so you can isolate, say, a particular carrier's fleet or everything currently cruising above a certain height. That combination of a live view and a searchable, filterable layer underneath is what makes the app useful for more than a glance.

Airports get their own treatment. Tapping an airport icon brings up arrivals and departures, flight status, which aircraft are on the ground, current delays and weather conditions. For anyone meeting someone off a flight, that is arguably the most valuable part of the whole app, because it puts the operational picture for a single airport in one place instead of spreading it across airline sites and departure boards.

Pointing your phone at the sky, and 3D views

The feature that surprises people most is the one that uses the device itself: point your phone or tablet at an aircraft overhead and the app identifies the flight and shows its information, including a photo of that specific plane. It is a small trick, but a memorable one, and it turns a walk outside into something closer to plane spotting without the radio equipment.

There are 3D views as well. One shows what the pilot of an aircraft sees, and another lets you replay a flight in three dimensions, with hundreds of airline liveries represented. These are not tools for planning a trip so much as ways to understand a route visually, and they are the sort of thing that appeals to people who already find aircraft interesting rather than to someone who just wants to know whether a flight is late.

History and playback round out the picture. You can look at historical data and watch past flights play out again on the map, which is useful for reconstructing what happened on a route you care about or for following a flight you missed while it was in the air. The depth of that history depends on which version of the app you are using, which brings me to the paid tiers.

Silver, Gold and what the free version covers

The developer is clear that the free app includes everything described so far: the live map, the point-at-the-sky identification, the 3D views, flight and airport details, search, filters and history playback. On top of that there are two upgrade options, Silver and Gold, each with a free trial, and the prices are shown inside the app because they vary by country and currency. Subscriptions go through the Google account on the device and renew on their own. To stop the next charge, you have to turn renewal off more than a day ahead of the period ending, and you manage it in Google Play's account settings.

Silver extends what you can see rather than changing how the app works. It adds 90 days of tracking history, more aircraft details such as serial number and age, more flight details including vertical speed and squawk, filters and alerts for tracking flights you care about, and current weather at more than 3,000 airports shown over the map. Gold includes all of that plus 365 days of history, live weather layers for clouds and precipitation, aeronautical charts and oceanic tracks showing the paths flights follow, boundaries showing which air traffic controllers are responsible for a flight, and extended Mode S data with more altitude, speed, wind and temperature information when it is available.

My reading is that the free tier covers the everyday question of where a plane is going, while the paid tiers are for people who want to study the system rather than glance at it. The app also carries advertising, which is worth factoring in. It is a reasonable split, but it is a split, and the most detailed data sits behind a subscription.

How the positions actually arrive

It helps to know where the dots on the map come from. Most aircraft today carry ADS-B transponders that broadcast their position, and the developer maintains a network of more than 50,000 ground stations worldwide to receive those signals. In a growing number of regions, multilateration is used to work out the positions of aircraft that do not carry ADS-B equipment, and coverage in North America is supplemented with real-time radar data.

The important word in that explanation is coverage. The developer notes that it is variable and can change at any time, which is the honest way to describe a system built on receivers, geography and agreements rather than a single global feed. If you are tracking a flight over a region with thinner receiver density, expect the picture to be less complete than it is over densely covered land.

There is also a stated limit on what the app is for. The app is for entertainment only and should not be relied on where safety is at stake. That is standard legal language, but it is a useful reminder that this is a consumer tracker rather than an operational tool, and that it should not be treated as authoritative for anything safety-related.

Wear OS, updates and the shape of the app

On Wear OS, the same idea is scaled down: nearby aircraft in a list, basic flight details, and a map view when you tap one. It is a sensible companion feature for a glance at the wrist rather than a replacement for the phone, and it fits the app's habit of putting information where you already are.

The app was first released in September 2010 and was updated on September 27, 2026. The most recent changes are bug fixes and performance improvements, which is the kind of update note that tells you the team is maintaining what is there rather than adding new headline features this time around. For an app that depends on live data, steady upkeep matters more than novelty.

The developer also invites direct contact by email and points to its accounts on X, Facebook and YouTube, which is a normal support route for an app of this size. None of that changes what the app does, but it does mean there is a documented way to report a problem with a flight or a map issue rather than shouting into a void.

Who gets the most from a flight tracker

The clearest audience is anyone who needs to know about a specific flight: people meeting arrivals, travelers checking whether a plane is running late, and staff or hosts who want the operational picture for an airport rather than a single airline's view. For them, the airport boards, delays and weather conditions do most of the work, and the live map is a bonus.

The second audience is aviation enthusiasts, and this is where the app goes deeper than a status checker. Pointing a device at the sky, replaying flights in 3D, filtering by aircraft type or altitude, and digging into historical playback are all built for people who find the system itself interesting. The Silver and Gold tiers, with their longer histories, weather layers and controller boundaries, are aimed at that same group.

If you fall somewhere in between, the free version still gives you the live map, search, airport information and 3D views, which is a substantial amount to work with. The trade-offs are the advertising, the fact that the most detailed data requires a subscription, and the reality that coverage varies by region. Those are worth weighing against how often you actually look at the sky.

A tracker worth keeping for flight days and plane spotting

Flightradar24 does one job and does it broadly: it shows you where aircraft are and gives you the context to understand them. The free tier is generous enough to cover routine flight checking, and the paid tiers extend the depth for people who want history, weather layers and controller information.

I would point travelers who regularly meet arrivals or track their own flights toward it first, because the airport and flight detail is the most immediately useful part. Aviation enthusiasts will get more out of it still, particularly if they upgrade for the longer history and map layers. Anyone bothered by advertising should know it is part of the free experience.

It is free to install, it has been maintained for well over a decade, and it answers a question most people have had at least once while looking up. That is a straightforward recommendation for a flight tracker that covers both the casual glance and the deeper hobby.

What's new

We regularly update Flightradar24 in order to bring you the best flight-tracking experience. In this latest update, you’ll find: Bug fixes and performance improvements. Enjoy using Flightradar24? Rate the app and leave a review!