Terms & Conditions

1. Acceptance of terms

By registering for an account or using the AvioADSB service in any way, you agree to be bound by these Terms and Conditions. If you do not agree, you must not use the service.

2. Description of service

AvioADSB is a community-run ADS-B data network. Contributors run SDR receivers that feed decoded ADS-B data into the network, and a public API serves the aggregated live data. The API can be used without an account, subject to anonymous rate limits. Registered users whose receivers actively share data can create an API key with higher limits (the "contributor tier"). A key keeps the contributor tier while at least one of the account's receivers has shared data within the preceding 7 days; otherwise it is subject to anonymous limits. Current limits are published on the homepage and in the API documentation and may change.

3. Account responsibilities

• You must provide accurate information when registering.
• You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your credentials, your receivers' feed tokens and your API key.
• You must notify us immediately of any unauthorised use of your account at [email protected].
• You may not register multiple accounts to circumvent rate limits or access restrictions.

4. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• Circumvent rate limits or quotas, for example by rotating IP addresses, distributing requests across networks, or sharing, publishing or pooling API keys.
• Scrape the live map or any endpoint other than the public API to obtain data in bulk.
• Attempt to interfere with, disrupt, or overload any part of the service.
• Feed fabricated, replayed or duplicated data, or misrepresent a receiver's location.
• Use the service for any unlawful purpose or in violation of aviation regulations.
• Use the data to stalk, harass or endanger anyone, or to track a person rather than an aircraft.
• Impersonate another user or create misleading receiver entries.

We may block networks or revoke keys involved in abuse, without prior notice.

5. Data you contribute

"Station data" means the ADS-B and Mode S messages, and MLAT timing, that your station forwards to AvioADSB, and what is derived from them.

You grant AvioADSB a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, transferable and sublicensable licence to collect, store, combine, analyse, modify, publish and distribute station data, and to license the network's merged data, combined from every station, to third parties on any terms, including for a fee. The licence is perpetual because once your data is merged with other stations' data, it can't be separated out again. It is non-exclusive: you remain free to share the same data with anyone else, including other networks.

The following are not covered by that licence, and AvioADSB will never sell, license or hand them over commercially:

• station locations, precise or approximate;
• who feeds: names, emails, usernames, station UUIDs, feed tokens or IP addresses;
• any one station's own stream, or data labelled with the station it came from;
• per-station statistics.

Personal data, such as your account details, contact messages and applications, is not station data. It is handled only as described in our Privacy Policy, and nothing in this section limits your rights over it.

You confirm that you are allowed to operate your station and share its data where it is located. Receiving ADS-B is legal in most countries but not all, and you are responsible for the law that applies to your station. This section survives the deletion of your account for station data already contributed.

6. Permitted use of the API and data licence

The free API service is provided for personal projects, education and research. Using the API service to power a commercial product or service, or on behalf of a commercial organisation, requires a separate agreement with AvioADSB. Contact us before any commercial use.

Data you obtain through the API is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0). Credit “Data: AvioADSB (CC BY-NC 4.0)” with a link to https://avioadsb.org, link to the licence, and indicate if changes were made.

Aircraft registration, type and operator details come from third-party sources: the US FAA aircraft registry, Virtual Radar Server standing data, and tar1090-db, which is based on the Mictronics aircraft database. They may be incomplete or out of date, and the CC BY-NC licence covers only what AvioADSB has rights in: it doesn't grant rights in third-party data that aren't ours to grant.

The map widget is different. Any website, including a commercial one, may embed the free flight tracker widget using the iframe code we provide, unmodified and with its AvioADSB banner visible. This permits displaying the widget only: it does not permit extracting, scraping or reusing the data it shows, which stays under the terms above, and it does not extend to the API. We may change, limit or withdraw the widget at any time.

7. Intellectual property and open-source components

ADS-B signals are publicly broadcast by aircraft. The raw decoded data is not original creative work. The AvioADSB website design, brand, documentation and our own software are the property of AvioADSB.

Third-party components remain under their own licences. The live map is based on tar1090, licensed under the GNU GPL version 2 or later (licence); its code is served unminified, so the source is what your browser receives. The site also uses MapLibre GL JS (BSD 3-Clause), h3-js (Apache 2.0), Swagger UI (Apache 2.0), country flags by catamphetamine (MIT), and the fonts Geist, Geist Mono, Space Grotesk and Noto Sans (SIL Open Font License). Maps show data © OpenStreetMap contributors, with tiles by OpenFreeMap and OpenMapTiles.

8. Disclaimer of warranties

The service is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind. We make no guarantee of uptime, data completeness, accuracy, or timeliness. The data must not be used for navigation, collision avoidance, search and rescue, or any other safety-critical aviation operation, or for any use that requires certified aviation data sources.

The feeder scripts and setup guides install and configure software on your computer. Read a script before you run it; you run it at your own risk.

If you are a consumer, this section does not affect the rights the law gives you that cannot be excluded by contract.

9. Limitation of liability

Nothing in these terms limits or excludes liability for intent or gross negligence, for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or any other liability that cannot be limited or excluded under applicable law, including mandatory consumer law. Subject to that, and to the maximum extent permitted by law, AvioADSB shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, or consequential damages arising from your use of (or inability to use) the service.

10. Account termination

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate accounts that violate these terms, without prior notice. You may delete your own account at any time from your dashboard; your account, its stations, API key and statistics are deleted straight away from the live database, and in any case within 30 days. If none of your account's stations has connected for 90 days, we email you a warning and delete the account 7 days later unless one reconnects.

11. Former programmes

The feeder rewards programme and the free receiver programme have ended and accept no new participants. For questions about a balance or sponsored equipment from before they closed, contact [email protected].

12. API changes

Endpoints, response formats and limits may change. We aim to announce breaking changes to the versioned API (/v1) in advance on the website.

13. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms from time to time. We will notify registered users by email of material changes at least 14 days before they take effect, unless a change is needed sooner for legal or security reasons. If you don't agree, you can stop using the service and delete your account; using it after a change takes effect means you accept the new terms.

14. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the law of the country where AvioADSB's operator is established. If you are a consumer, you also keep the protection of the mandatory consumer law of the country where you live, and you may bring proceedings in the courts of that country as well as in those of the operator's.

If a court finds any part of these terms invalid or unenforceable, the rest remains in effect.

15. Contact

For questions about these terms, contact [email protected].