Clean, standardized vessel movement data
Track live positions, query historical routes, and access consistent AIS data through a unified API — without the overhead of cleaning, merging, or normalizing raw maritime datasets.
- Live & historical AIS — Access current vessel positions and historical movement data
- Clean & standardized — Work with normalized, consistent data across every request
- Query-ready — Retrieve vessel movements by vessel, time, and location through a unified data interface
What you get
Vessel Data You Can Build On.
One API for vessel tracks, port calls, areas and identities from coastal receivers worldwide, ready to drop into your product.
One API, One Key
Tracks, port calls, areas and vessel details from a single REST API. Add your key to one header and start building.
Clean, Ready-to-Use Data
Consistent, deduplicated positions in one schema, so you ship features instead of cleaning raw feeds.
Follow Any Vessel
Find ships by name, call sign, MMSI or IMO and get one continuous track, even when the MMSI changes.
Port Calls and Areas
Port calls with arrival, departure and draught, and every vessel that passed a strait or offshore site in our coverage. Areas on paid plans.
Built for Developers
A quickstart, full API reference and OpenAPI spec, plus clear errors that tell you exactly what to fix.
Free to Explore
Watch traffic on the free Live Map and test the API on the Free plan. No card needed.
Use Cases
Built for Every
Maritime Team.
The same tracks, port calls, areas and vessel identities, applied to the questions your team answers every day. Code examples are in the quickstart.
Operations
Fleet & Port Operations
Replay any voyage fix by fix and see which vessels used a berth, anchorage or approach channel over the period you choose. Work out how long ships waited at anchor, when they arrived and how fast they moved, then feed the results straight into your dashboards, reports and maps without cleaning raw feeds first. Every position arrives deduplicated in one schema, with speed, course, heading and navigational status, so the same code works for one ship or a whole port.
- Voyage history by MMSI or IMO
- Port calls and port areas
- Speed, course and heading
- Underway, anchored or moored
- 1-minute and 1-hour views
- GeoJSON for your own maps
Built forShip operatorsPort authoritiesLogistics platforms
Trading & Risk
Market, Insurance & Risk
See what a vessel actually did before you price, insure or charter it. Check its past voyages, port calls and speed, and follow one ship across MMSI changes with a single IMO track. Watch the traffic through the straits and ports your market depends on, and load long histories into your own models as CSV. Name, call sign, type and size come from the vessel endpoint wherever the ship broadcasts them, and each answer is built only from recorded positions, so the history behind your decision is the history that was broadcast. Paid plans include 12 months of history.
- Strait and port traffic
- Underwriting and claims checks
- One track across MMSI changes
- Name, call sign, type and size
- Bulk history as CSV
- 12 months on paid plans
Built forTraders and analystsInsurers and brokersCharterers
Compliance & Research
Compliance, Research & Public Sector
Build a documented record of where vessels went, with the source and license behind every position. Study traffic around offshore sites, protected areas and shipping lanes over months. Positions are never interpolated, and suspicious jumps are flagged rather than deleted, so the record matches what was broadcast. Track and area responses carry the attribution text each source requires, so you can publish findings and reports without chasing license terms.
- Track records for audits
- Offshore and protected areas
- Source named on every fix
- Attribution built in
- Implausible jumps flagged
- Real fixes, never interpolated
Built forCompliance teamsResearchersPublic agencies
AI Assistants
Use AIS Trail from
AI Assistants.
Connect Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or any other MCP client to AIS Trail and ask in plain words. Every tool and its limits are in the MCP docs.
MCP server
Ask About Ships in Plain Words
AIS Trail runs a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server with read-only tools, so your assistant can find ships, follow them and list their port calls for you. The live tools answer from the same live picture as the free Live Map and work without a key. The archive tools, vessel_track, vessel_port_calls and port_calls, send your API key to the API, so they use your plan's credits, history depth and rate limit exactly as the REST endpoints do. Clients that cannot add a header, such as connectors that only sign in with OAuth, can use the live tools only.
- Live ships, no key needed
- Ships in an area or nearby
- Tracks from the archive
- Port calls by ship or port
- Ports by name or UN/LOCODE
- Attribution in every answer
Works withClaudeChatGPTCursorAny MCP client
Pricing
Start Free,
Scale When Ready.
Try the API for free, then pick the credits you need. Empty results and errors use no credits.
Payments are handled by Paddle, our merchant of record. Prices are in US dollars and exclude VAT or sales tax.
One-time, any plan
Credit pack
20,000 API credits for any plan, valid for 12 months. Used after your monthly credits; packs add up.
$49 one-time
What is a credit?
You pay for the data you get back
| Historical track | 1 credit per vessel-day: all positions of one vessel on one UTC day |
|---|---|
| Area query | 1 credit per distinct vessel-day in the rows returned |
| Vessel details, IMO lookup, search | 1 credit per vessel returned |
| Port calls | 1 credit per port-call record |
| Live position (REST) | 1 credit per vessel returned |
| Live WebSocket stream | Included in Pro and Business, no credits |
| Bulk file | 1 credit per 10 vessel-days in the file |
| Status, sources, usage, docs | Free |
- One vessel's full track for one day, any resolution: 1 credit
- One vessel's track for 30 days at 1-hour resolution: 30 credits
- A 2° box for one hour with 120 vessels in it: 120 credits
- A search that returns 20 vessels: 20 credits
Empty results and errors use no credits. Monthly credits renew every billing period (every calendar month on Free) and are used before credit packs.
Typical market prices run from about $12 to $38 per 1,000 credits; on AIS Trail, 1,000 credits cost from $1.00 (Business) to $2.45 (credit pack).
Every plan
Same data, different limits
| Data | Tracks by MMSI or IMO; raw, 1-minute and 1-hour resolution; JSON, GeoJSON and CSV |
|---|---|
| Requests per second | Free 1 · Starter 5 · Pro 10 · Business 20 |
| Rows per page | Free 1,000 · Starter, Pro and Business 50,000 |
Every limit per plan is in the API docs.
Need more credits or larger areas?
We set up custom plans by email.
FAQ
Common
Questions.
Short answers here; details are in the docs. Anything else: [email protected]
Create a free key, send one request and get a vessel track back as JSON, GeoJSON or CSV.
No card needed · 500 free credits a month
