Flightradar24 Playback Scraper

What does Flightradar24 Playback Scraper do?

Flightradar24 Playback Scraper takes a bounding box and a unix timestamp and returns every flight that was inside that box at that exact moment in the past — a historical snapshot, not a live feed. One dataset row per flight.

It talks directly to the same internal gRPC live feed the official Flightradar24 Android app uses (data-feed.flightradar24.com), reverse-engineered by static decompilation and validated against real live traffic. No API key, no login, no scraping setup. This is the /playback slice of Flightradar24 All-in-One API, split out as its own focused Actor.

Why use Flightradar24 Playback Scraper?

• Real historical positions — not an estimate or interpolation, the exact position snapshot Flightradar24's own server returns for that timestamp
• Single call, no pagination — pass a bounding box and a timestamp, get an array of flights back
• No account needed — the same anonymous feed the free tier of the app itself uses
• Use cases: aviation incident research, airspace congestion analysis at a past point in time, competitive intelligence on historical route activity, flight-delay research

Input

Field	Type	Required	Description
north / south / west / east	number	yes	Bounding box in decimal degrees
timestamp	integer	yes	Unix timestamp (seconds) of the point in time to look up — last 7 days only
limit	integer	no	Max flights to return. Default 1500.

Example:

{
    "north": 6,
    "south": -11,
    "west": 95,
    "east": 141,
    "timestamp": 1756598400,
    "limit": 500
}

Output

One dataset row per flight, Flightradar24's own Flight message shape (same fields as the parent Actor's /live-feed, just at the requested past timestamp):

{
    "flightId": 1094013202,
    "lat": -5.815,
    "lon": 111.413,
    "track": 205,
    "alt": 38000,
    "speed": 476,
    "callsign": "PAS646",
    "onGround": false,
    "timestampMs": "1786924707066",
    "extraInfo": { "flight": "IP646", "reg": "PK-PWO", "type": "A320" }
}

Known limitations

• Playback depth is 7 days. This matches the free tier of the Flightradar24 app itself. It is enforced server-side by Flightradar24, not by this Actor — an out-of-range or too-old timestamp returns an empty flight list rather than an error, so an empty dataset is a valid (if unlucky) result, not a failure.
• Live tracking, flight detail, search, and airport boards are separate spin-off Actors — this one is playback-only. For the full endpoint set, see Flightradar24 All-in-One API.
• Not an official Flightradar24 product — an independent tool using Flightradar24's internal APIs, reverse-engineered from the public Android app. Use responsibly and in accordance with Flightradar24's Terms of Service.

Pricing

This Actor uses Pay Per Event billing: charged $0.003 per flight row returned (event flight, FREE tier price — lower on paid plans). See the Actor's Pricing tab for current rates.

FAQ

Does this require a Flightradar24 account? No. The Actor uses the same anonymous data feed the Flightradar24 mobile app uses — no login, no API key.

Why did I get zero results? Either the timestamp is older than 7 days (Flightradar24's own limit), or the bounding box genuinely had no tracked flights at that exact moment. Try a slightly different timestamp or a wider box.

Need a custom integration? Contact me at romysaputrasihanandaa@gmail.com or hire me on Fiverr.