🚢 AIS Vessel Tracking + Bunker-Fuel Voyage Economics

The AIS feed every commodity desk wants without the MarineTraffic invoice. Pull live vessel positions from any bounding box on the planet, join each ship to the nearest bunker-fuel hub, and get a per-nautical-mile fuel-cost estimate the moment the position drops. Built for the desks that price oil cargoes, charter rates, and shipping equities from the data themselves.

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Why this beats the alternatives

Paid AIS providers (MarineTraffic, VesselFinder Pro) charge $500-$5,000/month for the same vessel snapshot you can pull from an open-licensed feed. The catch on the free side has always been (a) you need to write your own WebSocket client, and (b) the position alone is useless unless you join it to commercial context: where's the nearest bunker port, what does VLSFO cost there, what's the implied per-mile burn for a VLCC at service speed.

This actor does both, in one call.

• ✅ Free upstream — aisstream.io WebSocket distributes AIS broadcasts under a CC-permitted license
• ✅ Bunker join included — each vessel record carries the nearest bunkering hub + VLSFO/IFO380/MGO prices
• ✅ Voyage economics estimate — fuel_cost_per_nautical_mile derived from class-typical burn rate × bunker price
• ✅ Graceful fallback — if the WebSocket is slow or your key is wrong, AISHub HTTP kicks in, then a curated reference set
• ✅ No MarineTraffic — that one's walled off (HTTP 403); we don't even try

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What you get

Each emitted dataset record includes:

Field	Description
mmsi	Maritime Mobile Service Identity
vessel_name	As broadcast in AIS static data
vessel_type	tanker / cargo / container / bulk / passenger / fishing
imo	7-digit IMO number
flag	Flag state (when available — AIS position frames don't always carry this)
position.latitude / longitude	Current fix
course_over_ground	Heading in degrees
speed_over_ground	Speed in knots
destination_port	AIS-broadcast destination (often UN/LOCODE)
eta	Estimated time of arrival
last_seen	ISO 8601 timestamp of the position fix
bunker_price_at_position	Nearest-port block: port name, distance, VLSFO/IFO380/MGO USD/MT, price_as_of
voyage_economics_estimate	fuel_burn_rate_mt_per_nm, fuel_cost_per_nautical_mile_usd, cost_per_1000nm_voyage_usd

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Use cases

Commodity trader (oil / dry bulk)

You need to forecast freight-rate pressure on the Singapore-Rotterdam VLCC route. Pull tankers in the Singapore Strait at 14:00 UTC, see how many are bunkered up, get VLSFO price at Singapore, model per-mile cost into the WAF chart. Backfill into your dashboard daily.

Shipping company / chartering desk

Track which competitors are sitting at the Fujairah anchorage versus underway. Cross-reference bunker prices in Fujairah versus Singapore to spot bunker-arbitrage candidates — if a ULCC bunkers in Fujairah and pays $605/MT VLSFO instead of $612/MT in Singapore, that's ~$25K saved on a typical 4,000MT bunker buy.

Port logistics / cruise / energy

Build a regional shipping-pulse dashboard. Pipe one bounding-box snapshot per hour into BigQuery. Join the bunker prices to track port competitiveness over time.

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Sample input

{
  "aisstream_api_key": "your_free_aisstream_key_here",
  "bounding_box": "1.0,103.5,1.5,104.5",
  "vessel_types": ["tanker", "cargo"],
  "max_vessels": 50,
  "include_voyage_economics": true
}

Or run with no API key — the actor falls back to AISHub HTTP, then to the curated reference vessels (still useful for schema validation and pipeline plumbing):

{
  "bounding_box": "1.0,103.5,1.5,104.5",
  "vessel_types": ["tanker", "cargo"],
  "max_vessels": 5,
  "include_voyage_economics": false
}

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Sample output

{
  "mmsi": "538008414",
  "vessel_name": "MARAN PROGRESS",
  "vessel_type": "tanker",
  "imo": "9714145",
  "flag": "Marshall Islands",
  "position": {
    "latitude": 1.405,
    "longitude": 104.121
  },
  "course_over_ground": 245.0,
  "speed_over_ground": 11.5,
  "destination_port": "FUJAIRAH",
  "eta": "2026-06-15T22:00Z",
  "last_seen": "2026-05-30T21:08:42Z",
  "data_source": "aisstream",
  "bunker_price_at_position": {
    "nearest_bunker_port": "Singapore",
    "distance_to_bunker_port_nm": 23.7,
    "vlsfo_usd_per_mt": 612.0,
    "ifo380_usd_per_mt": 478.0,
    "mgo_usd_per_mt": 798.0,
    "price_as_of": "2026-05-29",
    "source": "bunker-index-reference"
  },
  "voyage_economics_estimate": {
    "fuel_type_assumed": "VLSFO (IMO 2020-compliant 0.5%S)",
    "fuel_burn_rate_mt_per_nm": 0.085,
    "bunker_price_usd_per_mt": 612.0,
    "fuel_cost_per_nautical_mile_usd": 52.02,
    "cost_per_1000nm_voyage_usd": 52020.0,
    "notes": "Service-speed midpoint estimate. Real burn varies with draft, weather, hull fouling, and slow-steaming policy."
  }
}

📊 Sample Output

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How the live scrape works

Path	When it's used	Latency	Limitations
aisstream.io WebSocket	When aisstream_api_key is set	First positions ~2-5s, hits max_vessels in 10-60s on busy regions	60s hard cap per run; quiet regions return fewer rows
AISHub HTTP fallback	When no key supplied OR WebSocket returns 0 rows	Single GET, ~3-10s	Public test endpoint often returns 401 without registered username; use as a probe
Curated reference	When both live paths return 0 rows	Instant	Reference vessels in Singapore Strait — useful for schema/pipeline validation

Free AIS update frequency is lower than paid feeds. Paid MarineTraffic-tier feeds update positions every 5-30 seconds; aisstream.io's free tier is best-effort, typically 1-3 minute lag for any given vessel. For most commodity-intel use cases this is plenty; for sub-second tracking you'll want a commercial feed.

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🔗 Related Actors

Pair this with the rest of the NexGenData macro/finance fleet:

• Currency Exchange Rates (nexgendata/currency-exchange-rates) — convert bunker-price USD figures to your local desk currency
• SEC EDGAR Filings Scraper (nexgendata/sec-edgar-filings-scraper) — track listed shipping companies' SEC filings alongside their fleet
• SEC Form 13F Holdings Tracker (nexgendata/sec-form-13f-holdings-tracker) — see which institutional funds are long shipping equities
• SEC Form 8-K Material Events (nexgendata/sec-form-8k-material-events-scraper) — catch shipping-company material events the moment they file
• Federal Register Rules Scraper (nexgendata/federal-register-rules-scraper) — IMO/EPA fuel regs and sanctions filings
• USA Spending Federal Awards (nexgendata/usaspending-federal-awards-scraper) — DoD/Navy shipping contracts
• Weather Forecast Scraper (nexgendata/weather-forecast-scraper) — overlay weather forecasts on shipping lanes for slow-steaming impact
• Finance MCP Server (nexgendata/finance-mcp-server) — equity quotes for Maersk, Frontline, COSCO, Hapag-Lloyd

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FAQ

Q. Do I need an aisstream key to use this? No — without a key the actor falls back to AISHub and then to a curated reference set. But for production live data, get a free aisstream key at https://aisstream.io.

Q. How fresh are the bunker prices? The reference table is snapshotted from publicly cited daily Bunker Index figures on 2026-05-29. Each record includes price_as_of so downstream consumers know the freshness.

Q. Why no MarineTraffic? MarineTraffic walls off API access with HTTP 403 and aggressive bot detection. We don't try to defeat that; we use legitimately free AIS sources instead.

Q. Can I track a single vessel? Use a tight bounding box around its expected position. For specific-MMSI tracking, a dedicated MMSI filter is on the roadmap.

Q. Is AIS data legal to redistribute? Yes — AIS is broadcast over unencrypted VHF as a maritime-safety obligation. aisstream.io distributes it under a CC-compatible license.

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Built by NexGenData — open-source-feed-driven intelligence actors for finance, logistics, and regulatory desks.