Flightradar24 Silver, Gold and Business: what the subscription tiers offer

For many spotters, Flightradar24 is the first app that opens at the fence. If you use it more often, you quickly run into the paid tiers: Silver, Gold and Business. The store listing counts dozens of features, but what is actually behind them? This article is a neutral feature overview. We go through the tiers area by area and explain how the trial, billing, device limits and the feeder account work. If you already know what the tiers can do and only want to know which one suits your spotting, go straight to Flightradar24 subscription: what is worth it for spotters?.

The tier model at a glance

Flightradar24 works on the freemium principle. The basic version costs nothing, but you have to put up with ads and live with some limits. Above that sit three subscriptions:

• Silver is the entry tier for private users. In the App Store, Flightradar24 advertises around 30 features that Silver unlocks.
• Gold includes everything from Silver and, according to the store description, comes to over 60 premium features.
• Business is the top tier and is aimed at professional users. It has the longest history and the most generous account limits.

Important to understand: All tiers see the same aircraft. A subscription neither extends coverage nor makes aircraft visible whose data is restricted at the owners’ request. Flightradar24 cites programs like the American LADD as well as blocked military and government flights. More on this in Why an aircraft doesn’t appear on Flightradar.

What the free version covers

According to the store description, live tracking, flight details, historical data with playback, airport boards, bookmarks and filters are already part of the free app. In practice that means: you see the live map, tap aircraft, get flight number, route, type and registration and can page through arrivals and departures at any airport. History reaches back seven days. There is only one bookmark, and you can only be logged in on one device at a time.

How to use the basic features in everyday life is explained in the Flightradar24 guide. What the symbols and colors on the map mean is in Symbols, colors and data fields on flight tracker maps.

Area 1: flight history and playback

History is the clearest distinguishing feature of the tiers. Flightradar24 lets you play back individual past flights in the app and on the website. To do that, you search for a flight or an aircraft and pick the rotation you want. On the website there is also global playback, which shows all traffic in an area at a specific date and time.

Tier	How far back
Free	7 days
Silver	90 days
Gold	365 days
Business	3 years

For spotters, history is mainly useful for follow-up work: which aircraft arrived on 26R at 2:37 p.m.? On which routes was a particular registration flying last month? How to build such research is shown in Looking up an aircraft’s past flights and Matching sightings with ADS-B logs and flight tracker history. Flightradar24 also points out that support doesn’t take on individual research into historical flights. You have to search yourself.

Area 2: aircraft and flight data

From Silver on, the info cards become much more detailed. According to Flightradar24, further aircraft details such as serial number and age are added to the basic data, as well as flight data such as vertical speed and the squawk code. That helps with clean documentation: the serial number identifies an airframe unambiguously, even if it later gets a new registration. What distinguishes MSN and line number is explained in MSN, c/n and line number. You can alternatively determine the age from other sources, see Finding out an aircraft’s age by registration.

Gold adds extended Mode S data. This means values the aircraft itself transmits through its transponder, such as additional information on altitude and speed as well as measured wind and temperature values. Whether this data shows up depends on whether the aircraft transmits it and whether a receiver in range picks it up. The technology behind it is described in Transponder Mode A, C and S explained. What a particular squawk means is in Squawk codes 7500, 7600, 7700.

Area 3: filters, alerts and bookmarks

Filters and alerts are the tools with which you reduce the map to what interests you. Filters hide, for example, everything except one aircraft type, one airline or one altitude range. Alerts go off when a flight meets a certain condition. According to the store description, filters and alerts are part of Silver’s feature set; the basic version already offers simple filters. How to set up alerts sensibly and what alternatives other services offer is shown in Setting up notifications for aircraft, types and airlines.

For bookmarks, Flightradar24 gives clear numbers. Aircraft, flights, airports and map sections can be saved, you need at least a free account for that, and the list is synced between your devices:

Tier	Bookmarks
Free (with account)	1
Silver	10
Gold	25
Business	60

For spotters, bookmarks on individual registrations are handy, for example for special liveries. In the aircraft list you then see at a glance whether the aircraft is currently flying and where to.

Area 4: weather, charts and airspace

From Silver on, according to the store description, Flightradar24 shows the current weather at more than 3,000 airports directly on the map. That lets you quickly see how wind and visibility are at the destination.

Gold extends the map with several layers:

• Weather layers with clouds and precipitation on the live map.
• Aeronautical charts and the oceanic routes over the North Atlantic and other oceans.
• Control area boundaries, that is, the areas for which a particular air traffic control unit is responsible.

These layers are exciting if you want to understand why a flight takes a detour or where responsibility changes. Background on the structure of airspace is provided by Airspace classes A to G. For pure photo planning, a weather map of your own is often enough, see Windy and other weather maps for spotters.

Area 5: Business and professional use

Business is tailored to companies and professional users. Compared with Gold, history extends to three years, and account limits rise to four devices and 60 bookmarks. Besides credit card, debit card and PayPal, Flightradar24 also offers, according to support, payment by invoice for Business subscriptions. Which further tools Business unlocks compared with Gold is not described in detail by support or the store text. You should check the exact feature set in the current overview before signing up, because Flightradar24 keeps adjusting features and names.

What Business doesn’t include: access to the programming interface. According to support, Flightradar24 sells the API for live positions, airline and airport data and historical flight data separately from the app subscriptions. If you want to evaluate data automatically, you need an API package of your own.

The tiers compared

Feature	Free	Silver	Gold	Business
Flight history	7 days	90 days	365 days	3 years
Serial number and age	no	yes	yes	yes
Vertical speed, squawk	no	yes	yes	yes
Filters and alerts	basic filters	yes	yes	yes
Airport weather on the map	no	yes	yes	yes
Cloud and precipitation layers	no	no	yes	yes
Aeronautical charts, control areas	no	no	yes	yes
Extended Mode S data	no	no	yes	yes
Bookmarks	1	10	25	60
Simultaneous sessions	1	3	3	4 devices
Payment by invoice	–	no	no	yes
API access	no	no	no	no

The table summarizes the information from Flightradar24 support and the store description (as of October 2026). How the offer stacks up against the biggest competitor, you can read in Flightradar24 and FlightAware compared.

Trial, billing and cancellation

How the trial works

For the paid tiers, Flightradar24 offers a seven-day trial. The features are available immediately, and payment comes only afterward. There is only one trial per account. If you have already used it, the full price is due immediately the next time you sign up. So that the service continues seamlessly after the trial, Flightradar24 asks for payment details right at the start. If you don’t want to keep paying, you must cancel at least 24 hours before the end of the trial.

During the trial on the website, according to support, you can still switch freely between Silver, Gold and Business and between monthly and annual billing.

Monthly or annual

All three tiers come with monthly or annual billing. The first payment is due at the end of the trial. If you cancel, you keep access until the end of the period already paid. For subscriptions through the website, a restriction applies after the trial: you can only switch from monthly to annual. If you want to go back to monthly billing, you cancel, let the annual subscription run out and then sign up again. For subscriptions through the App Store or Google Play, the store handles tier changes and prorates them.

Prices differ by country, currency and way of purchase. In the US App Store, Silver was most recently listed from $2.99 a month, with Gold and the annual subscriptions above that depending on the offer. What counts is the price your store or the website shows you at signup. How the subscription fits into the overall cost of the hobby is shown in What does plane spotting cost?.

One subscription, all platforms

A subscription isn’t tied to one device. According to Flightradar24, it works on the website and in the apps for iOS and Android as long as you log in everywhere with the same email address. That also holds across store boundaries: a subscription bought on Google Play runs on the iPhone and vice versa. Only billing stays with the original store. If you want to change your payment method, you cancel there, wait for the end of the term and then sign up the new way.

If you still see ads despite a subscription, support says that is usually because you aren’t logged in with the right account. Logging out and back in and, if necessary, clearing the browser cache usually solves the problem.

The special case: Contributor account for feeders

Flightradar24 gets a large part of its data from volunteers who run ADS-B receivers. If you feed data with your own Raspberry Pi receiver or a device supplied by Flightradar24, you get, according to support, a free Contributor account. It stays active as long as your feed is running. In the past, people often spoke of a free Business subscription in this context. Which features the Contributor account includes today is not stated in detail in the support explanation. So check that in your account before you rely on it.

Keep three points in mind when switching:

• Cancel an existing subscription beforehand. The Contributor upgrade doesn’t end a paid subscription automatically. Without canceling, you keep paying.
• A free account is enough. An existing free account is upgraded automatically as soon as data from your station arrives. If that doesn’t work right away, logging out and back in helps.
• Don’t start a trial. If you don’t have an account yet, create a free one and start neither a trial nor a subscription.

Setup step by step is described in Setting up fr24feed. What returns other networks offer their feeders is compared in What feeders get in return. How a dense receiver network can also locate aircraft without ADS-B is explained in MLAT/multilateration.

What a subscription doesn’t change

Finally, a few misunderstandings that come up regularly in spotter groups:

• There is no more coverage. Where there is no receiver, even Business shows no positions. You only improve missing coverage in your region with additional receivers.
• Blocked aircraft stay blocked. Restricted private aircraft, blocked military and government flights as well as especially prominent aircraft appear in no tier. Unfiltered alternatives are presented in Unfiltered community trackers compared.
• The passenger logbook is a topic of its own. For your own flights, Flightradar24 offers a separate logbook with MyFlightradar24. You will find alternatives in Logging your own flights as a passenger.

If you would rather combine several free services than take a subscription, Free flight trackers will help, and the big overview is given in Flight tracker apps compared.

Conclusion

The three Flightradar24 subscriptions build on each other cleanly. Silver extends history to 90 days and delivers the detail data that helps with documentation: serial number, age, vertical speed and squawk, plus filters, alerts and ten bookmarks. Gold adds a year of history, weather and airspace layers and extended Mode S data. Business extends history to three years, raises account limits and is aimed at professional users. All tiers share the same data basis, and API access belongs to none of them. If you run your own receiver, the Contributor account gives you a free alternative. Whether a subscription pays off for your spotting is settled by the guide Flightradar24 subscription: what is worth it for spotters?.