Free vs Premium Access on ADS-B Exchange: What You Actually Get

ADS-B Exchange's public map at globe.adsbexchange.com is free to use and shows live aircraft tracking, flight history playback, and detailed Mode S/ADS-B data fields without an account. The only premium features the site itself names are no ads and a satellite layer. If you just want to watch live traffic, replay a flight trace, or read the data panel, the free map covers it. Premium is worth considering only if ads or the missing satellite basemap genuinely get in your way.

What the free map includes

Everything below is available on the public globe.adsbexchange.com interface with no login:

• Live aircraft positions on the map, with icons you can click to open a detail panel.
• A full data panel per aircraft: registration, type code, altitude, speed, squawk, signal source, RSSI, message rate, and last-seen time.
• Flight activity history with playback controls (1x through 40x speed) — you click the trace line to start playback.
• Search and filters by callsign, altitude range, source, database flags, and "interesting" aircraft.
• Jump to airport or coordinates via the search box.
• Map settings for text/icon size, icon size multiplier, and units (Aeronautical, Metric, Imperial).
• Toggles for ground vehicles, non-ICAO targets, and other overlays.

The page also exposes a Premium Login entry point, which is how you'd reach the paid tier — but the free map is the default experience and doesn't require it.

What premium adds

Based on the site's own labeling, premium is described as:

That's the entire stated difference. There's no indication in the page evidence that premium unlocks extra aircraft, longer history, higher refresh rates, or additional data fields. If you were expecting a bigger data advantage, the site doesn't advertise one.

When the free map is enough

Choose free if:

• You're spotting, tracking a specific flight, or checking what's overhead right now.
• You want to replay a trace to see where an aircraft went.
• You're reading the data panel to understand hex IDs, MLAT contacts, or squawk codes.
• Ads don't bother you and you're fine with the default basemap.

When premium makes sense

Consider premium only if:

• The ads on the free map are disruptive to how you use it (e.g., long tracking sessions on a large screen).
• You specifically want a satellite basemap for terrain-aware viewing — for example, tracking low-altitude traffic over mountains or correlating positions with ground features.

If neither applies, there's no functional reason from the site's own description to pay.

Improving coverage instead of paying

The page includes an "Improve Coverage" prompt alongside the premium login. This is the contribution path — feeding your own receiver data into the network rather than buying access. If your goal is better local coverage or supporting the project, that's a separate route from premium and worth checking on the site itself, since the page evidence doesn't detail the requirements.

A note on what the data means

Some aircraft show no registration, type, or ICAO hex — the panel labels these as "Non-ICAO hex," "Anonymized MLAT result," or "ATC contact broadcast." MLAT contacts require a ModeS transponder and reception by at least 4 receivers, which is why some targets appear with limited or dynamic identifiers. This is a data-source limitation, not a free-vs-premium difference — the same fields appear (or don't) regardless of tier.