Baltic & Nordic Vessel Tracker — Live AIS for AI Agents

Track live ships across the Baltic and Nordic seas in real time. Give this Actor a sea area, a ship type, or a list of MMSI numbers and it returns every matching vessel's live position, speed, course, type, size, flag and destination — clean, structured, and ready for an AI agent, a logistics pipeline, or a maritime dashboard.

No API key, no setup. Just current AIS vessel data, filterable the way you need it.

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Why this Actor?

A large language model can't know where a ship is right now — AIS positions change by the minute. This Actor is the real-time maritime grounding an agent or app needs: ask "what tankers are in the Gulf of Finland heading to St. Petersburg?" and get back a precise, structured answer with names, flags and destinations.

• AI agents & assistants — a live tool an agent can call to answer maritime questions with real data.
• Logistics & supply chain — see what's moving, where, and toward which port.
• Compliance & risk — watch tanker traffic and flag states in sensitive corridors (the Baltic is a focus area for "shadow fleet" and sanctions monitoring).
• Maritime dashboards & research — feed a live vessel layer into your own map or analysis.

The Baltic and Gulf of Finland are among the busiest and most geopolitically watched waters in the world — this Actor gives you a clean, programmable window into them.

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What you get

For every vessel the Actor returns:

Field	Description
mmsi	Maritime Mobile Service Identity
imo	IMO number (permanent hull ID)
name	Vessel name
callSign	Radio call sign
shipTypeText	Cargo / Tanker / Passenger / Fishing / Tug / …
flag	Flag state, derived from the MMSI
latitude, longitude	Live position
speedKnots	Speed over ground
courseOverGround	Course over ground (degrees)
heading	True heading (degrees)
navStatusText	Under way / At anchor / Moored / Fishing / …
destination	Reported destination
draughtMeters	Current draught
lengthMeters, widthMeters	Vessel dimensions
positionTime	When the AIS feed was last updated
scrapedAt	Extraction timestamp

Live position and movement are joined with each ship's identity and dimensions into one flat record — no separate lookups.

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Example output

{
  "mmsi": "219598000",
  "imo": "9692129",
  "name": "NORD SUPERIOR",
  "callSign": "OWPA2",
  "shipTypeText": "Tanker",
  "flag": "Denmark",
  "latitude": "55.770832",
  "longitude": "20.85169",
  "speedKnots": "12.4",
  "courseOverGround": "246.5",
  "heading": "247",
  "navStatusText": "Under way using engine",
  "destination": "NL AMS",
  "draughtMeters": "11.8",
  "lengthMeters": "183",
  "widthMeters": "32",
  "positionTime": "2026-07-06T14:11:51Z",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-07-06T14:12:43.965Z"
}

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Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
region	string	all	Sea area: all, gulf-of-finland, gulf-of-bothnia, baltic-proper, danish-straits, kattegat-skagerrak, or custom.
bbox	string	—	Custom bounding box minLon,minLat,maxLon,maxLat (when region = custom).
mmsi	array	—	Track only these vessels by MMSI.
shipType	string	all	cargo, tanker, passenger, fishing, tug, sailing, pleasure, high-speed, other.
nameQuery	string	—	Only vessels whose name contains this text.
destination	string	—	Only vessels whose destination contains this text.
movingOnly	boolean	false	Exclude stopped/anchored/moored vessels.
maxItems	integer	1000	Maximum vessels to return.

Track all tankers heading to a port

{
  "region": "gulf-of-finland",
  "shipType": "tanker",
  "destination": "PETERSBURG"
}

Watch specific vessels

{
  "mmsi": ["230123456", "265847000"],
  "movingOnly": false
}

A custom area

{
  "region": "custom",
  "bbox": "18,59,21,60",
  "shipType": "cargo"
}

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Sea areas

Area	Roughly covers
Gulf of Finland	Helsinki, Tallinn, St. Petersburg approaches
Gulf of Bothnia	Between Finland and Sweden
Baltic Proper	Central Baltic, Gotland, southern approaches
Danish Straits	Øresund, Great Belt — the gateway in/out of the Baltic
Kattegat & Skagerrak	Between Denmark, Sweden and Norway
All	The full Baltic & Nordic coverage area

For anything more precise, use a custom bounding box.

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Use cases in detail

1. AI agents & real-time tools

Expose this as a tool an assistant can call: "Which cargo ships are near Helsinki?" or "Where is the vessel with MMSI 265847000?" — the agent gets structured data it can reason over, in seconds.

2. Logistics & port operations

See inbound traffic to a port by filtering on destination, or watch a fleet by MMSI. Combine with draught and dimensions to plan berthing and pilotage.

3. Compliance, sanctions & "shadow fleet" monitoring

Filter tankers by area, flag and destination to keep an eye on sensitive corridors. Flag state and destination make it easy to flag traffic worth a closer look — a strong companion to name-based sanctions screening.

4. Maritime dashboards & mapping

Feed a live vessel layer into your own map (each record has latitude/longitude and heading), refreshed on demand.

5. Research & journalism

Study traffic patterns, port calls and flag distributions in one of the world's most closely-watched maritime regions.

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How to use it

1. Click Try for free.
2. Pick a region (and optionally a shipType, destination, or mmsi list).
3. Click Start.
4. Read the results as JSON, CSV, Excel, or via the Apify API.

Runs finish in seconds — the whole area is fetched and filtered in one pass.

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Calling from the API

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/YOUR_ACTOR_ID/runs?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "region": "gulf-of-finland", "shipType": "tanker" }'

Then fetch the dataset:

$curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/YOUR_ACTOR_ID/runs/last/dataset/items?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN"

Works with webhooks, Zapier, Make and n8n so you can pipe a live vessel feed straight into your systems.

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Frequently asked questions

What area does it cover? The Baltic Sea and Nordic waters — Gulf of Finland, Gulf of Bothnia, the Baltic Proper, the Danish Straits, and the Kattegat/Skagerrak. This is coastal (terrestrial) AIS, which covers these busy, enclosed seas very well.

How fresh is the data? Positions are pulled live on each run; positionTime tells you when the feed was last updated.

Can I track a specific ship? Yes — pass its MMSI (or several) in the mmsi field.

Can I filter by ship type or destination? Yes — shipType (tanker, cargo, passenger, …) and destination (substring match on the reported destination).

How do I get only moving ships? Set movingOnly: true to drop anchored, moored and stopped vessels.

What's the flag field? The flag state, derived from the vessel's MMSI country code — useful for spotting flags of convenience and monitoring specific registries.

Can an AI agent call this automatically? Yes — it's keyless and returns structured JSON, so it works cleanly as an agent/MCP tool.

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Notes & responsible use

This Actor surfaces publicly broadcast AIS data for the Baltic and Nordic region for informational, logistics and research purposes. AIS positions are self-reported by vessels and can be delayed, inaccurate, or absent; treat the data as indicative, not authoritative, and don't rely on it for safety-of-navigation or as sole evidence for any decision. Use it in line with applicable laws in your jurisdiction.

Source: official Baltic maritime AIS data (Fintraffic / digitraffic.fi), licensed CC BY 4.0.

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Support

Want another sea area, more ship-type detail, or an extra field? Open an issue from the Actor's page. Fair winds.