🚢 Finland Digitraffic Marine AIS Scraper

🚀 Track live Baltic Sea shipping in seconds. One run returns thousands of live vessel positions straight from Fintraffic's official open marine data feed.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-06-05 · 📊 19 fields per record · live AIS feed · Baltic Sea coverage

Fintraffic Digitraffic publishes the real Automatic Identification System (AIS) signal that ships broadcast across the Baltic. This Actor reads that open feed and turns each vessel into one clean, flat record: where it is, how fast it is going, which way it is pointing, and (optionally) its name, ship type, and stated destination.

The live locations endpoint typically reports well over 18,000 vessels at any moment, so even a small run gives you a rich snapshot of Gulf of Finland, Gulf of Bothnia, and open Baltic traffic. Vessel identity fields are joined on demand from the Digitraffic vessels metadata endpoint, keyed by MMSI.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Maritime analysts and logistics teams	Tracking vessel movements and port approaches
Researchers and data scientists	Studying traffic density and shipping patterns
Insurance and risk teams	Monitoring fleets and flagged vessels
Hobbyists and ship spotters	Watching named vessels move in near real time

📋 What the Finland Digitraffic Marine AIS Scraper does

• Reads the live AIS locations GeoJSON feed from Fintraffic Digitraffic.
• Flattens every vessel feature into MMSI, latitude, longitude, speed, course, heading, navigational status, and rate of turn.
• Optionally joins vessel name, ship type, destination, call sign, and IMO number from the metadata endpoint.
• Filters results by a list of MMSI numbers or by a latitude / longitude bounding box.
• Decodes raw AIS codes into readable labels (navigational status and ship type category).

🎬 Full Demo (🚧 Coming soon)

⚙️ Input

Field	Type	Description
maxItems	integer	How many vessel records to return. Free plan is capped at 10.
mmsiFilter	array	Optional list of MMSI numbers. Only matching vessels are returned.
minLat / maxLat	number	Optional latitude bounds of a bounding box (WGS84).
minLon / maxLon	number	Optional longitude bounds of a bounding box (WGS84).
includeMetadata	boolean	Join vessel name, ship type, and destination. Default true.

Example 1. A live snapshot of any vessels with names and destinations.

{
    "maxItems": 50,
    "includeMetadata": true
}

Example 2. Only vessels inside a Gulf of Finland bounding box.

{
    "maxItems": 100,
    "minLat": 59.0,
    "maxLat": 60.5,
    "minLon": 22.0,
    "maxLon": 28.0,
    "includeMetadata": true
}

⚠️ Good to Know: AIS is broadcast by the ships themselves, so optional identity fields such as destination are operator entered and can read UNKNOWN. The positionTimestamp reflects when each vessel last transmitted, which is why some values can be older than the moment you run the Actor.

📊 Output

Field	Description
🚢 name	Vessel name from metadata, when available
🆔 mmsi	Maritime Mobile Service Identity number
📍 latitude	Latitude in decimal degrees (WGS84)
📍 longitude	Longitude in decimal degrees (WGS84)
💨 speedKnots	Speed over ground in knots
🧭 courseDegrees	Course over ground in degrees
↗ headingDegrees	True heading in degrees
🚦 navigationalStatus	Readable navigational status label
🔢 navStatCode	Raw AIS navigational status code
🔄 rateOfTurn	Rate of turn indicator
🎯 positionAccurate	Whether the position fix is flagged as accurate
⚓ shipType	Ship type category, decoded from the AIS code
🔢 shipTypeCode	Raw AIS ship type code
🎯 destination	Operator entered destination
📻 callSign	Radio call sign
🛳️ imo	IMO ship identification number
🕒 positionTimestamp	When the vessel last transmitted its position
🕒 scrapedAt	When this record was collected
❌ error	Error message, or null on success

Sample records from a live run:

{
    "name": "NORD SUPERIOR",
    "mmsi": 219598000,
    "latitude": 55.770832,
    "longitude": 20.85169,
    "speedKnots": 0.1,
    "courseDegrees": 346.5,
    "headingDegrees": 79,
    "navigationalStatus": "At anchor",
    "navStatCode": 1,
    "rateOfTurn": 4,
    "positionAccurate": true,
    "shipType": "Tanker",
    "shipTypeCode": 80,
    "destination": "NL AMS",
    "callSign": "OWPA2",
    "imo": 9692129,
    "positionTimestamp": "2022-07-30T20:28:58.646Z",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-06-05T17:02:14.565Z",
    "error": null
}

{
    "name": "FFS ATLAS",
    "mmsi": 376128000,
    "latitude": 59.1802,
    "longitude": 19.612433,
    "speedKnots": 6.5,
    "courseDegrees": 205.7,
    "headingDegrees": 205,
    "navigationalStatus": "Restricted manoeuvrability",
    "navStatCode": 3,
    "rateOfTurn": 0,
    "positionAccurate": true,
    "shipType": "Tug",
    "shipTypeCode": 52,
    "destination": "UNKNOWN",
    "callSign": "J8B4709",
    "imo": 8500953,
    "positionTimestamp": "2021-12-08T05:18:31.289Z",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-06-05T17:02:14.577Z",
    "error": null
}

✨ Why choose this Actor

• Built directly on Fintraffic's official open data, no scraping of a rendered page.
• Decodes cryptic AIS numbers into labels a human can read.
• Optional metadata join means you choose between raw speed and full vessel detail.
• Bounding box and MMSI filters let you zoom into a port, a strait, or a single ship.

📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Identity join	Readable status	Geographic filter
This Actor	Yes, optional	Yes	Bounding box and MMSI
Raw API call	No	No, raw codes only	None built in
Commercial AIS portals	Yes	Yes	Yes, but paywalled

🚀 How to use

1. Sign up for a free Apify account using our referral link.
2. Open the Finland Digitraffic Marine AIS Scraper.
3. Set maxItems, and optionally add an MMSI list or a bounding box.
4. Click Start and watch live vessel records fill the dataset.
5. Connect the dataset to your dashboard, notebook, or downstream app.

💼 Business use cases

Logistics and shipping

Need	How this helps
Port approach monitoring	Box filter around a harbour to see inbound traffic
Schedule validation	Match named vessels against expected arrivals

Insurance and risk

Need	How this helps
Fleet monitoring	MMSI list tracks a known set of vessels
Exposure mapping	Speed and status reveal stationary or distressed ships

Research and academia

Need	How this helps
Traffic density studies	Snapshots feed spatial analysis of the Baltic
Behaviour analysis	Course, heading, and rate of turn describe manoeuvres

Market and energy

Need	How this helps
Tanker watching	Ship type filter isolates tankers and their movements
Commodity flow signals	Destination hints at trade routing

🔌 Automating Finland Digitraffic Marine AIS Scraper

Connect runs and datasets to Make, Zapier, Slack, Airbyte, GitHub, and Google Drive through Apify integrations and webhooks. Schedule the Actor to refresh a live traffic snapshot on any interval you choose, then route new records straight into your tools.

🌟 Beyond business use cases

• Research: model shipping behaviour and seasonal Baltic traffic patterns.
• Personal: follow a favourite ferry or cargo ship as it crosses the sea.
• Non-profit: support environmental and maritime safety projects with open position data.
• Experimentation: prototype a live map or a vessel alerting bot.

🤖 Ask an AI assistant

Drop a few output records into ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or Microsoft Copilot and ask it to summarise traffic, cluster vessels by type, or flag ships that are stopped where they should be moving.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Where does the data come from? The Fintraffic Digitraffic open marine AIS service, which republishes signals broadcast by ships.

Is it really live? Yes. The locations endpoint returns the current AIS snapshot. Each record carries the moment that vessel last transmitted.

Why is destination sometimes UNKNOWN? Destination is typed in by the crew, so it is often blank or a placeholder.

Do I need an API key? No. The Digitraffic service is keyless. The Actor sends the courteous identifying header the service requests.

How many vessels are available? The live feed routinely lists more than 18,000 vessels across the Baltic.

Can I track one specific ship? Yes. Put its MMSI in the mmsiFilter list.

Can I limit results to one area? Yes. Provide a latitude and longitude bounding box.

What does navigationalStatus mean? It is the AIS status the ship reports, such as Under way using engine, At anchor, or Moored, decoded into words.

Why are some position timestamps old? A vessel only updates when it transmits. Anchored or distant ships report less often.

Can I turn off the metadata join? Yes. Set includeMetadata to false for faster position only runs.

🔌 Integrate with any app

Every run writes to an Apify dataset you can pull through the API, webhooks, or any of the platform integrations, so the data flows into spreadsheets, databases, BI tools, and custom apps.

🔗 Recommended Actors

• ParseForge OurAirports Global Airport Database Scraper
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• ParseForge Public API Collectors
• ParseForge Geospatial Data Tools

💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection.

🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form

⚠️ Disclaimer: independent tool, not affiliated with Fintraffic or Digitraffic. Only publicly available open data is collected.