A TRACKER CENTRED ON YOU

Flight tracker near me

Most flight trackers start with a flight number and follow its journey. This one starts with your location and continuously analyses every aircraft over your patch of sky. Free, real time, nothing to install.

Quick answer. A flight tracker "near me" should answer what is above you, not where a named flight is. Set your location on AeroScope and it lists every aircraft overhead in real time with its type, operator, altitude, distance and bearing from your position, and a transparent 0 to 100 attention score. Positions refresh about every seven seconds, data is fused from more than 60 public ADS-B feeds, and it runs in a browser with nothing to install and no account required.

How to use it

Three steps, about ten seconds

Step	What to do
1. Set your spot	Allow location access or drop a pin on the map. Everything re-centres on that point and the nearest aircraft sort to the top by distance.
2. Look up, then look down	Match what you can hear or see against the list. Aircraft on approach or climb-out are low and slow, while overflights sit at cruise altitude and move quickly across the display.
3. Open the aircraft	Tap any track for type, operator, altitude, ground speed, squawk and the reasons behind its attention score.

If you want a specific airport rather than your own position, the flights by airport index covers 44 major hubs and opens the map already centred on each one.

Why observer-relative matters

"What is over me?" beats "where is flight X?"

Conventional trackers are built around a journey. You supply a flight number and follow it from gate to gate. That is exactly right when you are collecting someone from an airport, and largely useless when you are standing outside wondering what just went over the roof.

Anchoring to a place changes what the software can compute for you. Distance, bearing, elevation angle, proximity to your position and closeness to restricted airspace are all measured from your point rather than from an airport. Sorting by distance means the aircraft you can actually hear is the first row, not buried among a thousand tracks nationwide.

It also changes which questions are answerable. "Has anything been circling here for twenty minutes" is a question about a place, not a flight, and only a location-anchored tracker can answer it.

What you can find out

The questions people actually arrive with

Question	Where to look
What plane just flew over?	The nearest track by distance, with type and operator. Full walkthrough in what is flying over my house.
Why is it going in circles?	Pattern classification labels orbits, racetracks and loiters. See why a plane is circling.
What is that helicopter?	Many helicopters broadcast ADS-B. See helicopter over my house.
Was that a military aircraft?	Military hex allocations and callsign patterns are flagged. See military planes over my house.
Should I be concerned?	Almost never, and the score explains itself. See is that aircraft a threat.
Is that aircraft even real?	Integrity and consistency checks flag broadcasts that contradict themselves. See detecting spoofing.

Reading altitude

Telling an arrival from an overflight

Altitude is the fastest way to interpret what you are looking at, and it is the field people most often misread.

Above roughly 30,000 ft. An overflight in cruise. It is passing over your region, not going anywhere near you, and will be a distant contrail rather than a noise source.
Roughly 10,000 to 30,000 ft. Climbing or descending, typically bound for an airport within a few hundred miles.
Below about 10,000 ft. Approach, departure, or genuinely local flying. This is what you hear.
Below about 3,000 ft and slow. Final approach, a helicopter, a survey aircraft, or training. Repeated passes usually mean circuits rather than anything unusual.

Note that ADS-B altitude is normally barometric and referenced to a standard pressure setting, so it is not a height above your garden. It is a flight level, and near the ground it can differ from true altitude by hundreds of feet.

Honest limits

What a local tracker cannot show you

Not every aircraft appears. Only those broadcasting ADS-B within range of a volunteer receiver. Many older light aircraft, most small consumer drones and anything with its transponder off are invisible. Silence on the map is not proof of an empty sky.
Coverage varies by where you are. Dense over North America and Europe, thin over oceans and remote terrain. See coverage.
It is near real time, not instant. There is latency between broadcast, republication, fetch and your screen. Positions are current to within seconds.
Identity can be imperfect. Registry data can be stale and some operators mask identity deliberately.

The full list is on the limitations page, and it is worth reading before drawing conclusions from anything you see.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Is there a free flight tracker that shows planes near my location?

Yes. AeroScope is free in any browser with no account or app required. Set your location and it lists every aircraft overhead in real time with type, operator, altitude, distance and bearing from your position, refreshed about every seven seconds.

How do I find out what plane is flying over me right now?

Set your location on the live map and look at the nearest track by distance. It shows the aircraft type, operator, altitude, ground speed and squawk code, along with an explainable 0 to 100 attention score. The whole process takes about ten seconds.

How accurate is a flight tracker near me?

Positions come from ADS-B broadcasts the aircraft themselves transmit, so they are precise, but they are near real time rather than instantaneous because of feed and fetch latency. Altitude is normally barometric and referenced to standard pressure, so near the ground it can differ from true altitude by hundreds of feet.

Why can I hear a plane that does not appear on the tracker?

It is probably not broadcasting ADS-B, or no volunteer receiver in range heard it. Many older light aircraft, most small consumer drones and any aircraft with its transponder switched off will not appear. Absence from the map is not evidence of absence from the sky.

Do I need to install an app to track flights near me?

No. AeroScope runs entirely in a web browser on desktop or mobile. There is nothing to install, no account is required, and the live map is free to use.