Flightradar24 | Flight Tracker vs Flighty
Flightradar24 is better for general, free flight tracking, while Flighty offers a more polished experience with detailed travel information for frequent flyers willing to pay.
Flightradar24 excels as a free, live flight tracker, despite intrusive ads. Flighty provides comprehensive flight details and a superior user interface, but its advanced features come at a high subscription cost.
Head to head
You want a free app to casually track live flights on a map, are tolerant of numerous ads, and prioritize seeing a wide array of planes overhead R11R20.
You are a frequent flyer or aviation enthusiast who values a sophisticated, detailed flight tracking experience with a clean interface, and are willing to pay a premium for comprehensive information and a flight log R71.
Evidence note: Reviews for Flightradar24 heavily focused on the ad experience and free feature changes, while Flighty reviews often discussed its high price and data accuracy issues.
Frequently asked
Is Flightradar24 truly free?
Is Flighty accurate for real-time updates?
What reviewers actually said
Built only from these 120 real reviews (foreign ones translated). Superscripts jump to the quote here. Apple has no per-review links, so [ref] opens that app's reviews on the App Store.
- [R8] Flightradar24 | Flight Tracker Great app: Room for improvement. Would like to see time lapse wx radar, and terminal forecasts on the airport pages. Enjoying the app otherwise!
- [R9] Flightradar24 | Flight Tracker Incomplete Flight Info: This app has been awesome to see what is flying overhead. However, the app owners have decided to erase flight logs and inform
- [R11] Flightradar24 | Flight Tracker Best app: Bro I just got this app 2 days ago, I loved the app. That’s why I love planes, I wanted to get this app. There was just SOOOO many planes. Like, literally the best app EVER!
- [R16] Flightradar24 | Flight Tracker Free features getting removed, overall platform decay: not impressed with changing free features to be subscription gated. previously a subscription was not needed to view more than 24 hours of arrival/departure history, now you do. desktop has a huge sidebar that was intentionally inserted to be as annoying as possible to force you to subscribe to remove. aircraft age and vertical speed previousl
- [R20] Flightradar24 | Flight Tracker I would have loved this as a child: Growing up I’d lie in my grass and look at the sky and watch a plane fly over me. I thought “I wonder where they’re going” and with this, I now know. Never really had any issues, runs smoothly.
- [R28] Flightradar24 | Flight Tracker can you fix this plz: idk if it’s just me or mg phone but on the app the entire screen is blurry.
- [R30] Flightradar24 | Flight Tracker Format: I like the old format better
- [R34] Flightradar24 | Flight Tracker STILL NOT LOADING (UPDATED REVIEW JUNE 29): The app was perfect. And still, flights don’t load. The search bar isn’t responsive. And it happens at JFK Airport. This was never an issue. It can’t possibly a reception problem with my phone, because I’m able to use other apps without a problem, including Flight Aware. I prefer this app though.
- [R21] Flightradar24 | Flight Tracker Great App but ads have gotten crazy!: This is a great and accurate app, however the ads have gotten extremely crazy and make it hard for the app to work correctly in my opinion as a QA agent. The ads started out light but now they are so heavy thry bog down your phones processing speed.
- [R23] Flightradar24 | Flight Tracker Love it: Thank you for this very informative and helpful app you have no idea how much it helped me. Whenever any of my family members travel I keep track of their flights through this app. It makes me feel relaxed knowing I can keep watch on their flight. I love all the neat features of the program. Thanks I a million ❤️
- [R1] Flightradar24 | Flight Tracker Persistent Ads: Enjoyed the app for about 2 weeks, didn’t mind the periodic ads. But now the ads that pop up cover the entire screen and make you sit through several seconds before the “X” appears in the corner to close. If that’s not bad enough, pressing the “X” takes you to the App Store instead of closing the ad, then when you close that, another ad pops up in its place. It seems now that I sp
- [R4] Flightradar24 | Flight Tracker Too many ads: Too many ads
- [R5] Flightradar24 | Flight Tracker Adds are bad: Everything is fine just the free tier has lots of adds
- [R6] Flightradar24 | Flight Tracker Add unless you pay: It’s okay but it makes you pay a subscription to go no adds
- [R7] Flightradar24 | Flight Tracker Sells your data very hard yo opt out: Openly sells your PII information to third parties even if you are a paid subscriber. Very hard to reject cookies. Also zero California privacy policy or request for data deletion.
- [R22] Flightradar24 | Flight Tracker Too hard to opt out of data sharing: App shares your data with 30 partners and you have to decline in each individually. Uninstalled instead
- [R61] Flighty Constant inquiries: Every day it asked me to rate/review sometimes 2 to 3 times a day. It’s very annoying.
- [R64] Flighty Stop: Asking me for a review
- [R63] Flighty Review: I paid for the lifetime membership, app is fine. I love how all my flights are in one place that is the best. However the data is incorrect a lot of the time. I try to send them corrections but nothing happens. Not really the data ahead of time more like while my flight is happening it will say delayed but it really isn’t.
- [R76] Flighty Unfortunately not timely info on United flight delays: Used to love this app but it has not received the timely info on United for multiple delays
- [R79] Flighty No longer accurate.: Flighty used to be my go to app. It would alert me of changes before TripIt or the airline. Now it never tells me of a change. The widget will say “no flights” even if I have flights that day and I travel twice a week. I feel so let down. I used to love and live by this app. Now it feels worthless.
- [R94] Flighty Can’t be trusted - too many errors: Currently tracking a flight that says the plane is still on the tarmac yet I’m tracking it on flight radar and it’s at 5000 feet! Full of errors so you can’t trust any of the information. At Christmas it got the connecting terminal wrong. Wish I could have got my money back. I won’t be renewing the subscription. Total rubbish!
- [R69] Flighty Flashy but Spendy: It’s a beautiful app but so many features are locked behind subscription fees that it might as well be part of the Adobe suite.
- [R71] Flighty Awesome for not just tracking your flight before take off but in flight to also while in the air.: App is awesome, pro is worth it and the pricing is good just 4.99 a week so you don’t have to do monthly just the week that you’re flying. Info on the app is full of info, even for an airplane nut or junkie will love the stats and gates, luggage carousel baggage pick up all in one place. If your pl
- [R78] Flighty Too expensive: Its a good app with a good interface, but you can get the same information on other apps for free. You are only really paying for an expensive flight logbook.
- [R90] Flighty Expensive compared to alternatives: The import by email function is very unreliable which leaves the history either manual or inaccurate. If you’re looking for real time flight data there are much cheaper options. All the useful features of this app are paywalled.
Synthesized from 120 recent App Store reviews · updated July 2026 · View on the App Store