Comparison

SatRadar vs OrbitRadar

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

SatRadar

Track thousands of satellites in real-time, from the ISS to Starlink constellations. Explore orbital paths, view satellite details, and even travel back in time to witness the history of space exploration. The app offers a detailed view of human activity in low Earth orbit.

Highlights
  • Real-time satellite tracking
  • View ISS and Tiangong
  • Global navigation satellite systems
  • Weather satellite tracking
  • Detailed satellite information
  • Time travel visualization
  • GPU-accelerated performance
Features
Read full description

Free. No account, no subscription, no ads. The free version tracks everything, not just the ISS. Ten thousand satellites are flying over your head right now. SatRadar shows you every one of them, where they actually are, doing what they actually do — drawn from the same orbital telemetry that mission controllers and ground stations use every day. Open the app and the sky is already alive. Accurate to the second: real orbital telemetry, the same TLE data NORAD publishes, checked against ground truth. NEW: MANEUVER INTEL Satellites move on purpose, and now you can see it. Tap one to see its recent engine burns, how big they were against its usual range, and anything out of pattern. Tap a burn on the strip above the time bar and the clock jumps back to replay it. Unusual activity collects this week's surprises, close approaches between two satellites name the partner, and optional notifications tell you when the ones you follow move. Estimated from public orbit data (U.S. Space Command via Space-Track.org): SatRadar's estimates, not official determinations. This is the sky we built. The Space Age started as one beep from Sputnik in 1957; today more than ten thousand active spacecraft fly above us — Starlink and OneWeb meshing the planet in broadband, GPS / GLONASS / Galileo / BeiDou holding civilisation's clocks, weather sentinels watching whole oceans, the ISS and Tiangong with humans aboard. Free to use, with no account required: • The International Space Station and Tiangong, traced across the sky in real time • The complete global navigation networks: GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, and BeiDou • Weather sentinels watching from geostationary perches: GOES, NOAA, METEOSAT • Full orbital trails on the GNSS fleet, so you can see the mathematical poetry of a 12-hour orbit at a glance • Tap any satellite to see what it is, where it is going, and how high above you it sits right now • Follow the Roman and James Webb space telescopes 1.5 million km out, with Earth beside them A one-time Starlink unlock opens the full mesh — nearly ten thousand satellites appearing as a living lattice around the planet, every laser cross-link drawn between its real endpoints. The same unlock brings the rest of low Earth orbit with it: OneWeb, Iridium NEXT, the Earth-observation fleets from Planet, Spire, and IceEye, and the communications constellations of Astranis, O3B, Orbcomm, and Globalstar in their actual orbital planes. A second one-time unlock — Time Travel — turns the whole thing into a time machine. Go back to October 1957 and the sky empties to a single object: Sputnik 1. Move forward and watch it fill in: GPS through the 80s and 90s, the ISS assembling itself from 1998, the low-Earth shell suddenly igniting as Starlink starts launching in 2019 — sixty birds at a time. Every satellite appears on its real birthday and moves on its real orbit. The smoothness is the point. SatRadar runs a custom GPU-side SGP4 propagator that holds every satellite at sixty frames a second, on a phone, while you rotate the globe and zoom from city to constellation in one continuous gesture. A few more touches that took a while: • Day and night terminator drawn live across the Earth, with atmospheric scattering at the edge • A stylised, richly textured globe — 8K Earth with live map tiles at close zoom • A star-accurate sky: the Sun, Moon, and the brightest stars in their true positions, every frame • Follow any satellite: lock the camera to it and ride along as it crosses the planet Both unlocks are optional one-time purchases — the app is complete without them. Never a subscription. Family Sharing supported, restored automatically across your iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV. Look up. Then look here. We are absolutely a spacefaring species — finally, suddenly, ridiculously — and you are walking around under the proof of it.

About

OrbitRadar

Features
Read full description

OrbitRadar turns your iPhone and iPad into a live window on the sky. Watch 15,000+ real satellites orbit a photorealistic 3D Earth in real time — from the same orbital data mission controllers use. • LIVE 3D GLOBE — Spin a beautiful day-and-night Earth and watch the whole satellite swarm move in real time. • EVERY SATELLITE — The full active catalog: Starlink, the ISS, GPS, weather and science craft, each on its true orbit. • TAP ANYTHING — Live altitude, speed, position, orbit details, operator and country for any object. • AR SKY VIEW — Point your device at the sky and see what's passing overhead right now. • CINEMATIC MODE — Sit back and let an auto-director fly you between the coolest objects. • BEYOND EARTH — Track the James Webb Space Telescope, Voyager 1 & 2, and even the Tesla Roadster ("Starman") out by the planets. • THE SOLAR SYSTEM — Explore the planets, moons and Sun at their real positions in the sky. • PRIVATE BY DESIGN — No account, no ads, no tracking. Works offline. Whether you want to catch the Space Station overhead tonight or just watch the sky come alive, OrbitRadar makes satellite tracking effortless and beautiful.

Screenshots

SatRadar4 screens
OrbitRadar4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: OrbitRadar at none against SatRadar's 2. SatRadar's advantage is update cadence (every 2 days vs every 5 days). On price, ads, device support and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. SatRadar sells 2 one-off in-app purchases. OrbitRadar asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

SatRadar ships an update every 2 days, OrbitRadar every 5 days. The most recent releases landed on October 31, 2026 and October 28, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 7 level
SatRadar versus OrbitRadar: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterSatRadarOrbitRadar
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.3 (6 ratings) — better—
Number of ratings6 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 2 days — betterEvery 5 days
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFree with in-app purchases—
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad, iPod — better
Requires iOS16.415.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size68 MB26 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperDavid HodgeOFL AS

In-app purchases

2 purchases

SatRadar

One-time2
  • Time Travel$4.99
  • Unlock Starlink$9.99
None

OrbitRadar

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is SatRadar free?
SatRadar is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is OrbitRadar free?
OrbitRadar is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do SatRadar or OrbitRadar have ads?
Neither SatRadar nor OrbitRadar shows ads.
Which is updated more often, SatRadar or OrbitRadar?
SatRadar ships an update every 2 days, and OrbitRadar every 5 days. Most recently, SatRadar was updated on October 31, 2026 and OrbitRadar on October 28, 2026.

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