Comparison

Overflight and Flightradar24 answer different questions.

A comparison page that pretends the incumbent is bad is a sales page. This isn't that. Flightradar24 is a remarkable product that most of us building in this space grew up on, and if you want what it does, you should use it. The two apps are shaped around different questions.

Flightradar24 is the atlas: every flight on a world map, searchable, with history, playback, airport boards, and fleet data. You go to it to look something up, anywhere on earth.

Overflight is the instrument: one fixed question, asked from where you're standing. What is that, and where do I look? No map of Europe, no search box. A radar scope of your own visible sky, the most-overhead aircraft identified in full, and an amber takeover when something notable is inbound.

Side by side
The question
Flightradar24: "where is flight X?" — anywhere, any flight. Overflight: "what's over my head right now, and which way do I look?"
The display
Flightradar24: a world map you pan and tap. Overflight: a radar scope centered on you; the overhead aircraft is identified without any tapping.
Apple TV
Overflight treats tvOS as its centerpiece: an ambient, auto-cycling instrument for the room. Flightradar24's home is the phone and the browser.
Look direction
Overflight gives a bearing, distance, and degrees above the horizon for the aircraft in focus, and speaks it via VoiceOver in radio phraseology. Finding a dot on a map and translating it to a sight line is on you.
History & search
Flightradar24, comprehensively. Overflight has none, on purpose: it's about the sky above you in the present tense.
Data
Both build on ADS-B. Flightradar24 operates its own enormous receiver network; Overflight queries the volunteer-run airplanes.live network.
Account
Flightradar24 has tiers and subscriptions. Overflight has no account at all; beta is free, 1.0 pricing isn't final.
Both

Plenty of people will keep both.

If you feed ADS-B or lurk on FR24 already, Overflight isn't asking you to switch anything. It's the glanceable instrument for the moment the house shakes, and the ambient scope on the TV the rest of the time. The atlas stays on your phone for everything else.

Early access

Try the instrument over your own sky.