Compare · Checked October 15, 2026

FlightByte vs AeroDataBox

Closer than the names suggest. AeroDataBox is a broad, inexpensive aviation catalogue with a push alert API attached. FlightByte is the alert. If a flight alert has to arrive, be trusted, and be acted on, the difference is in the delivery contract rather than the data.

In thirty seconds

AeroDataBox

FlightByte

What you pay for

API units

Two units per flight-status call; 40,000 units on Starter.

Watched flights

100 to 5,000 a month, lookups included.

Entry price

$19 / month

Starter: 40,000 units, five requests a second.

$9 / month

Hobby: 100 watched flights, 4,000 lookups.

Free tier

Marketplace Basic, or feed ADS-B data

400 units, non-commercial with attribution; direct plans have no free tier.

3 watched flights a month

Commercial use allowed; every event type, signed.

Webhooks

Flight Alert API, best effort

One credit per flight in each notification; no retries unless you ask for up to two; ten-second timeout.

Signed, retried, logged

HMAC-SHA256, eight retries with backoff, a record per attempt.

Proving the sender

Nothing in the delivery

No signature; put a token in your URL and check it yourself.

HMAC-SHA256 with a timestamp

Verify the raw body; replays older than five minutes fail.

What a subscription is

A flight number, until you delete it

Every instance from six hours back to 72 hours ahead; you filter by date.

One flight on one date

Ends itself with subscription.completed; metadata carries your booking id.

Change detection

A summary line per updated flight

The notification carries the whole flight item and a remark; the diff is yours.

23 typed events

With from, to, delta and a human message.

Over the limit

Contribute data, or upgrade

Direct plans: overage “coming soon”; marketplace plans bill per unit.

$0.08 → $0.02 per extra flight

By tier; nothing being watched is dropped.

Live updates

Where there is a feed

Live times need an airport in live or ADS-B coverage; elsewhere, the schedule.

As the airline reports it

Status does not depend on a receiver near the runway.

Historical data

History and schedules by date range

180 days on Starter, 365 on Growth and Scale.

Live window only

A few days back, a couple ahead.

Live position

withLocation=true

Position, speed and altitude on the status call.

None

Status and times, not where the aircraft is.

Two legs, one number

Both legs in the array

You pick; nothing stops you picking wrong.

A 400 with the legs

An origin selector; never a guess.

Reference catalogue

Airports, aircraft, fleets, delays, images

Plus airport search by text, location or IP.

Countries and flags

Airport data arrives inside each flight.

AeroDataBox figures from its pricing page, Flight Alert API guide and OpenAPI specification, checked October 15, 2026. Plans change; if something here is out of date, tell us and we will fix it.

AeroDataBox pricing, free tier and API key

What each plan costs, what you get without paying, and how a key is issued, from AeroDataBox’s own pages on October 15, 2026. Three channels sell the same API at different prices: direct, RapidAPI and API.Market.

AeroDataBox plans and prices
Plan	Price	Included	Notes
Starter (direct)	$19 / month	40,000 units	5 requests a second, 180 days of history, commercial use
Growth (direct)	$99 / month	400,000 units	10 requests a second, 365 days of history, priority e-mail
Scale (direct)	$499 / month	4,000,000 units	20 requests a second, B2B sublicensing
Basic (marketplace)	Free on RapidAPI, 7-day trial on API.Market	400 units	Non-commercial, attribution required
Pro (marketplace)	$7.50 API.Market, $8 RapidAPI	5,000 units	1 to 2 requests a second
Ultra (marketplace)	$37.50 API.Market, $40 RapidAPI	50,000 units	3 to 4 requests a second
Mega (marketplace)	$187.50 API.Market, $200 RapidAPI	500,000 units	The only plan with priced overage, about $0.0004 a unit

A single-day flight status call is 2 units and a date range is 6; on several plans a status call that returns a US flight plan counts double. Direct overage is listed as coming soon. Marketplace prices changed for new subscribers in September 2026, and API.Market also sells Pro 2 and Ultra 2.

AeroDataBox free tier

There is no free direct plan; a new account has none attached. The marketplace Basic plan carries 400 units, free on RapidAPI and a seven-day trial on API.Market. Since the September 2026 terms update it is non-commercial and needs attribution.

The other free route is feeding ADS-B data to AeroDataBox, which earns direct units that do not expire.

AeroDataBox API key: how to get one

Create an account on aerodatabox.com and attach a direct plan.
Create a key under API keys; it can be pinned to IP or CIDR ranges.
Send it as the X-Api-Key header to api.aerodatabox.com.

Through a marketplace the key is the marketplace’s: X-RapidAPI-Key with X-RapidAPI-Host on RapidAPI, x-api-market-key on API.Market.

FlightByte, on the same three questions

Hobby, $9 / month: 100 flights · 4,000 lookups
Starter, $19 / month: 500 flights · 20,000 lookups
Growth, $49 / month: 2,000 flights · 80,000 lookups
Scale, $99 / month: 5,000 flights · 200,000 lookups
Free tier: 3 flights a month, commercial use
Getting a key: sign up: free key on screen in a minute; paid plans by email
Where the key goes: x-api-key header

When AeroDataBox is the better choice

It covers far more of aviation than FlightByte does, and for three jobs it is the right pick.

You need the catalogue

Airports by text, location or IP; aircraft by tail number with a photo; airline fleets; runway data; airport delay statistics. FlightByte only carries the airport data that belongs to a flight.

You need history or a schedule

Flight history and schedules by date range, airport departures and arrivals for any window. FlightByte keeps a live window and a delivery log for the flights it watched.

You count units, not flights

At $19 for 40,000 units and two units a call, a status call costs about a tenth of a cent. If you are building a board for a whole airport, that is the right price model.

When FlightByte is

When a particular booking depends on a particular flight, and something in your product has to happen when it changes.

A subscription is a booking

One flight, one date, your metadata attached. It activates when the flight appears, ends itself when the flight lands, and never sends you tomorrow’s instance of the same number.

Delivery you can defend

Signed with a timestamp, retried eight times with backoff, suspended after twenty straight failures, every attempt logged with status and latency. When a driver says the message never came, you can look.

Changes, not snapshots

Twenty-three typed events with from, to, delta and a sentence. Branch on delay.increased or arrival.gate.changed instead of diffing two flight objects.

What watching 500 flights a month costs, and what is left to build

Using the Flight Alert API rather than polling, which is the fair comparison. A subscription per flight number, a few dozen notifications per flight, one credit each.

AeroDataBox

Starter plan: $19
500 flights, a few dozen alerts each: ≈ 10–20k units, inside Starter
Neighbouring days of the same number: billed too
Plus: date filter, dedupe, diff, retries, sender check, log

FlightByte

500 watched flights: 500 line items
Starter covers all 500: $19
or Growth (2,000) for headroom: $49
Plus: nothing; delivery is the product

At 500 flights the two invoices are the same, $19. The difference is the right-hand column of the AeroDataBox list: the pieces you would otherwise write, and keep running. See pricing.

Moving over

The models are cousins: both split airport, times and aircraft per side, both give UTC and local. FlightByte keeps estimated and actual apart instead of one revisedTime, separates gate and runway, and adds a phase you can branch on.

Field mapping from AeroDataBox to FlightByte
AeroDataBox	FlightByte	Note
`number`	`carrier.iata` + `flightNumber`	“KL 1395” becomes `KL` and `1395`; `flightKey` adds the date and the leg.
`status`	`status.phase`	See the status map below.
`codeshareStatus`	`operatedBy`, `codeshares[]`	The operating carrier and the list of marketed numbers.
`departure.scheduledTime.utc`	`departure.times.scheduledGate.utc`	Also `.local` and `.timezone`.
`departure.revisedTime`	`departure.times.estimatedGate` or `actualGate`	FlightByte tells you which one it is.
`departure.predictedTime`	`departure.bestTimeUtc`	The best time known right now, not a prediction.
`departure.runwayTime`	`departure.times.estimatedRunway` or `actualRunway`
`departure.terminal`	`departure.terminal`	Same on arrival.
`departure.gate`	`departure.gate`	Same on arrival.
`arrival.baggageBelt`	`arrival.baggage`	And an `arrival.baggage.changed` event when it is assigned.
`departure.checkInDesk`	—	Not carried.
`departure.airport.iata`	`departure.airport.iata`	Plus `icao`, `name`, `city`, `timezone` and a `country` with flag URLs.
`departure.airport.municipalityName`	`departure.airport.city`
`departure.airport.countryCode`	`departure.airport.country.code`
`departure.quality[]`	—	The subscription is `pending` until live data exists, then `active`.
`aircraft.reg`	`equipment.tailNumber`
`aircraft.model`	`equipment.name`	`equipment.iata` is the type code.
`aircraft.image`	—	No aircraft photos.
`airline.iata`	`carrier.iata`	`carrier.name` alongside.
`lastUpdatedUtc`	`fetchedAt`	When this snapshot was taken.
`location`	—	No position data.

Status value mapping
AeroDataBox status	FlightByte status.phase	Note
`Expected`	`scheduled`
`CheckIn`, `Boarding`, `GateClosed`	`boarding`	One phase for gate activity.
`Departed`	`departed`	Off the gate.
`EnRoute`, `Approaching`	`en_route`
`Arrived`	`landed`, `arrived`	On the runway versus at the gate.
`Delayed`	any phase with `status.delayed`	Delay is a flag on the phase, not a phase; `delay.increased` fires as it grows.
`Canceled`	`cancelled`	A `flight.reinstated` event exists for the ones that come back.
`CanceledUncertain`	—	Not modelled; the timeline carries the airline’s wording.
`Diverted`	`diverted`, `redirected`	The new airport is under `diverted`.
`Unknown`	—	The subscription stays `pending` until the flight resolves.

The subscription call. The shape you know, with a date and your own metadata on it. The filter for which days, the deduplication and the retries stop being your code.

# AeroDataBox
POST https://api.aerodatabox.com/subscriptions/webhook/FlightByNumber/TK1848?useCredits=true
X-Api-Key: $AERODATABOX_KEY

{
  "url": "https://yourapp.com/hooks/flights?token=…",
  "maxDeliveryRetries": 2
}

# every TK1848 from 6 h ago to 72 h ahead,
# until you DELETE the subscription

# FlightByte
POST https://api.flightbyte.dev/v1/subscriptions
x-api-key: $FLIGHTBYTE_KEY

{
  "carrier": "TK",
  "flightNumber": "1848",
  "date": "2026-09-12",
  "webhookUrl": "https://yourapp.com/hooks/flights",
  "events": ["flight.departed", "flight.arrived",
             "delay.increased", "arrival.gate.changed"],
  "metadata": { "bookingId": "BK-1042" }
}

# this flight, this date, signed deliveries,
# ends itself with subscription.completed

The quickstart has the receiver in Node and Python; Webhooks lists all 23 change types.

Questions people ask before switching

How much does the AeroDataBox API cost?

Direct plans are $19 a month for 40,000 units, $99 for 400,000 and $499 for 4,000,000. Through RapidAPI or API.Market, paid plans run from $7.50 to $200 a month. A single-day flight status call costs two units, so Starter covers about 20,000 of them. FlightByte is $9, $19, $49 or $99 a month, counted in watched flights rather than calls.

Does AeroDataBox have a free tier?

Not on direct plans: a new account has no plan attached. The marketplace Basic plan has 400 units, free on RapidAPI and a seven-day trial on API.Market, and since the September 2026 terms update it is non-commercial and needs attribution. Feeding ADS-B data earns direct units that do not expire.

How do I get an AeroDataBox API key?

Create an account on aerodatabox.com, attach a direct plan, and create a key under API keys, optionally pinned to IP ranges. It goes in the X-Api-Key header. Through a marketplace the key is the marketplace's: X-RapidAPI-Key on RapidAPI, x-api-market-key on API.Market.

Is AeroDataBox still on RapidAPI?

Yes. Direct, RapidAPI and API.Market are all live, and AeroDataBox says it has no plan to drop the marketplaces. Prices differ by channel: direct units are the cheapest, API.Market is cheaper than RapidAPI.

AeroDataBox has webhooks now. Why pay for FlightByte's?

For the delivery contract. AeroDataBox describes its alerts as best effort: no retries unless you ask for up to two, a ten-second timeout, nothing that proves who sent the request, and a subscription that covers every instance of a flight number until you delete it. FlightByte signs every delivery, retries eight times, logs each attempt, sends typed changes with from and to, and watches one flight on one date until it lands.

Is AeroDataBox cheaper?

At 500 flights a month, no: both are $19. Up to about 150 flights its $7.50–$8 marketplace Pro plan is a dollar or so under our Hobby; around 1,000 flights its Starter still covers a few dozen alerts a flight for $19 while ours is $44; from about 1,250 flights its next step is $99 and ours is $49. What FlightByte adds at any of those prices is the part after the invoice: the date filter, the deduplication, the diff, the retry queue, the sender check and the log you would otherwise write.

Can I use both?

Yes, and it is a sensible split. AeroDataBox for aircraft images, positions, airport search, delay statistics and history; FlightByte for the flights your product has to react to.

Other comparisons

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