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Two independent feeds, fused server-side: terrestrial AIS (a worldwide network of coastal VHF receivers, picking up vessels within ~40 nautical miles of land) and satellite AIS (small-satellite constellations like Spire and ORBCOMM listening from orbit for open-ocean vessels).

Our primary aggregation provider is aisstream.io; we add datalastic for redundancy and certain data types. Every position you see on the live map shows the actual last-reported timestamp — we don't interpolate to fake "live" updates.

More background: AIS vs Satellite AIS.

It hasn't disappeared — it's just outside terrestrial AIS range, so its position is only updated when a satellite passes overhead (every 30 minutes to a few hours, depending on the ship's latitude and the satellite constellation).

The vessel marker stays where it was last seen, and the timestamp on the popup tells you how stale the position is. A 24-knot ship can move 70 nautical miles in 3 hours — assume the position is approximate until a fresh satellite or coastal pass lands.

On the live map, vessel markers use three status colours:

• Orange — underway (in motion, SOG > 1 kn)
• Slate blue — at port (inside a port polygon, SOG < 1 kn)
• Amber/yellow — at anchor (in an anchorage area, SOG < 1 kn)

Marker opacity reflects timestamp freshness. A fully-saturated marker is <30 minutes old; semi-transparent markers are stale and should be treated as approximate.

For vessels in coastal coverage (i.e. close to a major port or shipping lane), AIS positions refresh roughly every 2 minutes, sometimes more often. In the open ocean, refresh slows to per-satellite-pass — typically every 30 minutes to 4 hours.

For container tracking, the carrier status (loaded, departed, transhipment, arrived, etc.) is polled once per day per container. AIS positions update independently and continuously between those polls.

One credit tracks one unique container for 30 days of unlimited re-tracking. During those 30 days, we poll the carrier daily, keep an AIS subscription on the carrying vessel, and surface every event we capture.

After 30 days, polling stops automatically, but your event history stays forever. Re-track the same container later (within 30 days of the original add) — no extra credit charged. Re-track after 30 days — one more credit.

Credits don't expire fast. They're good for 12 months after purchase.

Direct integration with the major ocean carriers: Maersk, MSC, CMA CGM, Hapag-Lloyd, ONE, Evergreen, COSCO, ZIM, HMM, Yang Ming, and PIL. Together these handle roughly 95% of global ocean container volume.

For NVOCC shipments — the long tail of forwarders booking through the majors — we resolve through the underlying master B/L's carrier. If you ship via an NVOCC, drop the master B/L number into the form and we'll find it.

Don't see your carrier? Email us — coverage requests jump the queue.

Three common causes:

• Container number format wrong. Must be 4 letters + 7 digits (e.g. MEDU9091004). The first 4 letters are the carrier prefix.
• Shipment too new. The carrier hasn't published the booking yet. Wait 4–24 hours after the booking is confirmed; the data usually appears.
• Wrong carrier. Some prefixes are shared across carriers. If you know the actual shipping line, specify it explicitly — that resolves most ambiguity.

If you've waited 24 hours and the lookup is still empty, email us with the container number and we'll trace it manually.

Broadpath is pay-as-you-go credits, not a subscription — so there's nothing to cancel. Buy credits when you need them; they're good for 12 months. Stop buying when you're done.

If you're on a custom enterprise plan, cancellation terms are in your contract. Email [email protected].

Unused credits are refundable within 60 days of purchase, no questions asked. Email [email protected] with your account email and we'll process it.

Used credits aren't refundable — once we've polled a carrier on your behalf, we've spent the API call ourselves.

We send four kinds of email and nothing else: (1) transactional account/billing emails, (2) security alerts, (3) a monthly product update if you opted in, and (4) incident notifications when something breaks.

We don't sell, share, or rent your email. Unsubscribe is one click from any non-transactional email.

Sign up for an account at app.broadpathlogistics.com, go to Settings → API Keys, and generate one. Live keys (prefix bp_live_*) hit production data; test keys (bp_test_*) hit synthetic/cached data so you don't burn quota during development.

Full API reference: /api-docs/.

Default authenticated limit is 600 requests/minute per key with a 10-second burst window. Anonymous (unauthenticated) calls are throttled to 60/min per IP.

If you need more, email [email protected] with your expected RPS and use case. We've gone up to 5,000 RPM for production integrations.

Every response includes x-ratelimit-remaining and x-ratelimit-reset headers so you can throttle proactively.

Email [email protected] with: the container number or vessel IMO, what we showed, what you believe is correct, and a source (screenshot of carrier portal, AIS evidence, port authority confirmation, etc.).

If the error is on our side (parsing, ingestion, classification), we fix it within a day. If it's upstream (carrier wrong, AIS spoofed, port misreported), we'll flag the record and escalate to the source.

Yes. AIS transmissions are open public broadcasts mandated by the IMO under SOLAS for vessels >300 GT. Anyone with a VHF receiver can receive them; the data has no inherent ownership claim.

Commercial AIS aggregation services (like aisstream.io) operate under data-sharing agreements with their receiver networks. Broadpath consumes those feeds under terms permitting commercial redistribution to our customers.