Live cruise ship tracker

How does the cruise ship tracker work?

Every cruise ship carries an AIS (Automatic Identification System) transponder. It broadcasts the ship's identity, position, speed over ground, course and navigational status on marine VHF radio, whether anyone is listening or not. It exists for collision avoidance, and because the signal is open, anyone with a receiver can plot it.

There are two ways those signals reach a map. Terrestrial receivers sit on coastlines, harbors and islands and hear ships within a few dozen nautical miles, more from a high antenna. Satellite receivers pick up AIS in orbit and cover the open ocean, though with gaps between passes. Our feed comes from a shore-based receiver network, which is dense along the busy cruise coasts of the Caribbean, Florida, Alaska and the Mediterranean.

A ship under way transmits every few seconds and a moored ship every few minutes, so near land the map is close to real time. Mid-ocean it is different. On a transatlantic crossing, a long Pacific leg or a repositioning cruise, a ship can sail out of range for a day or more. The map then keeps its last known position, and the "last seen" column tells you how old it is. Nothing is wrong with the ship; it is simply out of range.

How to read the live cruise ship map

Each marker on the map is the newest position we have for one ship. Tap it for the ship name, status, speed and destination, then follow the link to the ship page. The fleet table below the map holds the same data in sortable columns.

• Status. "Underway" means the engines are on and the ship is moving or maneuvering. "Moored" means alongside a pier. "Anchored" usually means a tender port, where passengers go ashore by boat.
• Speed. Cruise ships typically cruise between 15 and 22 knots. A ship under 3 knots is usually arriving, leaving or drifting off a port before the pilot boards.
• Destination. This field is typed into the AIS unit by the bridge crew. It is usually right, but it can lag a port behind, use a port code instead of a name, or show the final port of the cruise rather than the next call.
• ETA. Treat arrival times in AIS as the officers' estimate, not the schedule. The planned port times are in the itinerary on each ship page.
• Last seen. The age of the fix. Minutes old means live; hours old means the ship is offshore.

Sort the table by status to see which ships are in port right now, or by destination to see who is heading to the same harbor.

Track ships by cruise line

The map covers 166 ships from the ten lines in our catalogue. Each line has its own fleet tracker with a map limited to that fleet and a table you can scan in seconds:

• Royal Caribbean ship tracker — 31 ships, the largest fleet we follow, including Icon of the Seas
• Carnival ship tracker — 30 ships
• MSC Cruises tracker — 24 ships
• Norwegian Cruise Line tracker — 21 ships
• Princess tracker — 17 ships
• Celebrity tracker — 16 ships
• Holland America tracker — 11 ships
• Disney cruise tracker — 8 ships, including Disney Wish
• Cunard tracker — 4 ships, including Queen Mary 2
• Virgin Voyages tracker — 4 ships

If you sail with another line, such as P&O Cruises, Saga or Costa, its ships are not on this map yet. You can still browse every ship we follow on the ships index.

Where is my cruise ship now? Tracking a specific ship

To follow one ship, open its page from the table or the ships index and go to the live section (the #live anchor on every ship page). It shows the latest position on a map, the speed, the status and a one-line summary of what the ship is doing, next to the itinerary of the current and upcoming sailings.

This is the useful view if a family member is on board. The live position tells you where they are; the itinerary tells you where they will be tomorrow and how long the ship stays in each port. Ports and sea days rarely change, but weather can swap or cancel a call, so the live position is the better guide on the day.

Use Notify me when the ship docks on the ship page to get an email when the ship arrives in port. It is free and needs only an email address, no account. Passengers often have better phone signal in port, so it is a good cue to expect a message.

Why the tracker also shows cruise prices

Most people who look up a ship are either sailing on it soon or thinking about it. That is why the fleet table includes the fare of each ship's next sailing, and why every ship page lists upcoming sailings with prices. Fares are the cheapest cabin, per person, captured from booking sites on the date shown; they move often, sometimes daily.

What you can do with the price side:

• Price alerts. Follow a sailing and get an email when the fare drops. The Basic plan ($0.99 a month or $6.99 a year) covers five alerts; Pro ($1.49 a month or $9.99 a year) makes them unlimited.
• Cheapest market. We capture the same sailing in several national booking markets, including the US, Europe and Australia, and the price for an identical cabin often differs between them. Pro shows which one is cheapest.
• Price history. The chart on each ship page shows 30 days for free, 90 days on Basic and 12 months on Pro, so you can tell whether today's fare is a real low.

The map and the ship pages stay free. Plans are compared on the pricing page, and current price drops are in the deals feed. To start from dates and a region instead of a ship, use find a cruise.

Is there a cruise ship tracker app?

There is no tracker.cruises app in the App Store or Google Play. The tracker is a website designed to work on phones: the map, the fleet table and the ship pages load in any mobile browser, and you do not need to install anything or sign up. To open it like an app, use your browser's "Add to Home Screen" option. Price alerts and dock notifications arrive by email.

Is tracking cruise ships legal and private?

Yes. AIS is a public radio broadcast that ships send so that other vessels can see them, and passenger ships on international voyages are required to carry it. The data identifies the ship, its position and its movement. It says nothing about who is on board, and we do not show passenger information of any kind.

We keep a short recent track for each ship and show only the latest position on the map. Ships can and occasionally do switch AIS off in specific security situations, which is one more reason a ship may briefly disappear from any tracker.