MarineTraffic - Ship Tracking Reviews

I was looking for an app to track my vehicle shipment. MarineTraffic does a great job of that and more. There’s a catch for free accounts, however.

You get three “past route” and three “vessel info” unlocks before having to register and pay. No problem, I thought. Just want to track one ship over a period of 3-5 days. So day one I unlock the past route and vessel info for my ship. Very cool info! Day two I go to check on the vessel and… I have to use another unlock for both the past route and vessel info. Now day two again, but I closed MarineTraffic and it wants to use my final unlock for both the route and vessel info. It’s the same ship on the same route.

If you’re going to subscribe, this won’t matter to you. If you’re like me and only have a single, one-off use of MarineTraffic , go for it but don’t close MarineTraffic ! You’ll have to use your limited unlocks again and quickly run out. I hope MarineTraffic dev will consider allowing each unlock to last for the current sailing of the selected ship instead of what seems to expire as soon as I close MarineTraffic .

I was excited to pay for and download MarineTraffic just to find that the 16$ I paid for it doesn’t do much. For example I bought a plane tracker app from a different company and the cost for life was 4.99$ which gave me an unlimited number of favorite planes and allows me to track planes wherever they are anywhere I’m the world. Not with marine tracker. Once a ship leaves a coastal area and moves into satellite range (which I think is about 20 miles off the coast) you have to pay 1$ per ship, per day). So say you want to track 3 ships for a month - 90$. You can pay for a monthly rate but only for each action MarineTraffic does and those but add up pretty fast. For example to add more than 5 ships to you favorites would cost approximately 100$ a year at their best price of 8$ a month billed annually. What about larger packages. Those will cost you in the hundreds of dollars a year. The “pro” plan costs $1,200 a year. I would strongly suggest looking into what you want out of MarineTraffic before dropping the initial 16$. Very disappointed in MarineTraffic. It feels like the devs are just trying to milk every dollar out of me they can.

MarineTraffic does not do anything more than the publicly available ship tracking websites. None of the information on MarineTraffic is any better or more up-to-date than those other websites. MarineTraffic itself does not provide many functions, unless you sign up for an account, which did not function. I was unable to insert my country or state to complete the registration to log-in. I certainly feel like I was duped into paying for an app that doesn’t work.

I received an email asking for further feedback. It sent me to a link to a generic and positively worthless site. I will fully reiterate the complete and total rip-off that MarineTraffic is and hold Apple responsible for allowing MarineTraffic to exist.

You clearly have my info. If you legitimately care about feedback, I would be happy to elaborate, but please don’t placate me with insincere and fake emails.

Updated Quick suggestions to improve app for this user: Make the ship icons on the map more easy to understand (rather than just color and size, change the shape like Plane Finder does - where the shape of the icon shows what type of ship it is). When I tap a ship on the map, show a little pic of it right away rather than just the name. Show a link to web search results for the name so I can easily get more info. Or just allow people to annotate the info like “this is Jerry Jones’ yacht.” Make following and alerts much more easy to use. Fix the bottom bar to work better with the latest iPhones so there’s room for the swipe up bar. Let me set alerts somehow for “interesting ships headed my way.” Thanks!

After using the desk top version of this I decided to download MarineTraffic . I almost didn’t after reading reviews stating you had to pay for info on each vessel. After downloading I ran into the same issue, HOWEVER there is a super simple fix to see the vessel names/basic stats. For some reason MarineTraffic does not default to this; but if you go to settings-map options- you will see “vessel names”, you just have to toggle that on and you will be able to see them for free. A few took a few minutes to update but overall it is working just as the desktop version does.

We left Florida to go cruising in the Caribbean and had friends and family that wanted to see where we were. I, unfortunately, suggested MarineTraffic and they all purchased it. Now it RARELY updates my position. For example we spent 3 days in a marina on Great Exuma and it never updated. It updated once when we were sailing off the north coast of the same island. Now after 4 days anchored 9 miles north we have not updated. Other cruisers in the anchorage are showing up.

Keep in mind that we have brand new Vesper AIS and we show up on other cruisers Navionics and WatchMate consistently.

Only answer I got is maybe we need to upgrade to “satellite version “.

This is the response from tech support, “ The lack of Updated Positions of a vessel can be a result of a number of factors.
Signal strength, functional transponder, local (vessel area) and surrounding (nearby stations) weather conditions, temperatures, traffic and the satellite constellation frequency are some of the most important ones.

After checking on this further, I can see as well that your vessel is equipped with a Class B AIS Transponder.
Please note that the above information is especially true for vessels equipped with a Class B AIS Transponder as their signal may be weaker.

Wow! I’ve always wondered what happened to my packages that get shipped to Fiji. This time I had a whole container with a tractor in it. So I followed it through the shipyards and then the ship it was put on. VERY educational. Now I know why it takes anywhere from 2 months to 6 months to get my packages! This was all new to me; like watching the draught of the ship change between ports. And the info you can get on any port in the world at the tap of your finger…amazing. I only needed this for a month but I will use it again for my next shipping project.

Right now I am using MarineTraffic to track a single vessel on which I will soon be taking a cruise. I used to be able to filter out all other vessels as a default. Now with your recent update, while I can still do this, it doesn’t stay that way and all vessels keep on coming back. This clutters up the map a bit, and it is annoying to constantly have to go back and reset this filter.

Other than that this is a great app and I enjoy it very much. Thank you.

I’m an old Navy Radarman from before everything was computerized. This software has revolutionized the ocean shipping industry as far as being able to keep track of vessels of concern. I know we could have used this as an additional tool that would have proven itself in short order. I live in Belize and like to track the vessels coming down here from Florida so I can keep track of where items might be at that I’ve purchased and shipped down. It makes for a fun hobby too - kinda like train spotting used to be.

Love using MarineTraffic while on cruises. Fun to find out more about the ships around me, and there is a wealth of information on the ships. I just use MarineTraffic for fun and feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface of the features, but it’s easy to use and the augmented reality interface is pretty cool even if it doesn’t always seem to get the location right (very difficult given that these ships are moving). Have really had a good time with MarineTraffic. If you’re going on a cruise, this is worth every penny, as is the AR upgrade.

The cool thing about MarineTraffic is you get real-time information about boats, ships, yachts, etc. Here is what is frustrating, I have to pay in order to view a specific ship and it only lasts 24 hours. There is no “renew” button and so one is forced to guess which ship you want to view and pay if you want to continue. There should be a “Renew” purchase option or something. I also have to keep logging in over and over and over again. I’ve logged in 3 or 4 times just in the one session, even when I didn’t close MarineTraffic .

My son is on a ship sailing around the world and when the ship is out of range, it isn’t traceable. Ok, fine. But then they started offering $.99/ day for out of range tracking and it does not update. I’ve paid for 4 days of tracking and it hasn’t updated distance traveled at all. It shows the location of ship when you pay the $.99 but never again. Very frustrating. While it’s only $.99 it’s not giving us what was promised. I’d like my money back.

MarineTraffic has been my companion all over the world, tracking boats and figuring out “what I can see” from various places from the US to Germany to Sydney. I absolutely love it and would pay a lot more for a truly premium version, if one is ever released.

That said, I’m having crash issues lately - iOS 14.4.2 and version 4.0.8 of MarineTraffic . Usually happens upon opening MarineTraffic .

Thanks for the many many many happy hours of nerding out over boats 💛

Really cool App, gives you a general idea of the Vessels around you. But not all vessels you can gather information on or give the exact location of them.
Also even when you pay the $5 dollars some features like vessel tracking require you to pay an extra dollar to unlock.
For $5 bucks you can’t go wrong for an App. I would rate this as more of a fun toy while on vacation or on the water rather than a hardcore navigator life or death tool to use on the water. None the less 5 stars for me.

MarineTraffic enables you to track vessels anywhere in the world but especially in waters where you’re familiar or active. It’s up there with flight aware in aircraft tracking tail numbers. Way too much public information out there but you might as will take advantage of it -this is really cool. Suggestion- get a VHF radio and use in conjunction with MarineTraffic. You’ll learn tons and can use to teach your children or grandchildren or simply to navigate and stay out of the way!

Works pretty well, aside from slow vessel updates at times. . . Also, big peeve is failure of feature upgrades to work between devices. For example, I upgraded to nautical chart option on my iPad, expecting to see it in effect on my other devices - phone, laptop, office machine, and so on - as well. But it only works on the one device. That stopped me upgrading anything else. If I pay for an account and purchase an upgrade it should work on all my devices!

MarineTraffic run great but it’s expensive for what you get!! I ran out of notifications which I have never seen on any app of the 100s I have purchased. Got a notification that I’ve used all my notifications until 3 weeks from now. So I’ve used all my notifications in one weeks time. Notifications they have sent me at random. I even Downloaded and subscribed with the full amount to keep updated on a friend who’s traveling on the water. It would be cheaper to purchase a gps location device where you could send text messages. The price and features is to expensive.

I love cruising and traveling but I also live near a busy port and I love knowing what’s coming in and out and where in the world are my favorite ships located. I’d wish they would feature the complete scheduled and travelled route before and after of, let’s say, a cruise. It seems it only tells you the last port and next future port. Also it tells you the name and flag of the ship, tonnage, dead weight but it will not tell you the company the ship belongs to or how many passengers it can hold so I took off one star for that. Otherwise, I love it!

I got this ap on a whim because there was a ship parked off the coast and I was curious what it was and what it was doing. This ap is amazing. You can see, worldwide, what boat traffic is at sea or in port. Look at Monaco and see the super yachts, Or look in your local port and find out what Ships are dropping off goods. Always fun to see and use. The $.99 tracking is an option as are some other adons but this is a great ap and a must have for any maritime enthusiast.

I already paid for MarineTraffic itself. Then theres extra fees if I want to use certain features? Last I checked, that’s not how it’s supposed to work. So now here I am with a paid app, yet I can’t access vessel information without paying for satellite radar. Then you have to pay for weather readings. Then you have to pay for navigation charts. Then you have to pay for augmented reality. What’s next? Are you going to start charging when you to fart while MarineTraffic is open? Only reason I got MarineTraffic was because I was vacationing on the coast while ship watching and I was stoned. Otherwise I never would’ve paid the initial app fee!