---
title: "Northern Europe regional near-live vessel positions"
method: GET
path: "/api/v2/transport/vessels/live"
tags: ["Transportation"]
---

# Northern Europe regional near-live vessel positions

`GET /api/v2/transport/vessels/live`

Northern Europe regional near-live AIS vessel positions from sovereign open data feeds (Baltic + Norway), refreshed every 5 minutes by the ingest Function App. Regional coverage only - terrestrial AIS reaches roughly 200 km from shore, so coverage is bounded to these waters and updates on a 5-minute cadence. AIS is self-reported. Filter by bbox (minLon,minLat,maxLon,maxLat) and/or region. Attribution travels with every response in data.sources[].

## Query parameters

- `bbox` string — Bounding box filter: minLon,minLat,maxLon,maxLat.
- `region` 'baltic' | 'norway' — Restrict to one region; omit for both.
- `limit` integer — Page size.
- `offset` integer — Pagination offset.

## Response `200`

Paginated regional vessel positions with attribution and coverage label.

- EnvelopeAisLiveData
  - `data` AisLiveData, required — Payload for GET /maritime/vessels/live.
    - `region` string, nullable — Queried region, or null for both.
    - `bbox` string, nullable — Echoed bbox filter, or null.
    - `vessel_count` integer, required — Total vessels in the (bbox-filtered) snapshot before pagination.
    - `vessels` AisVesselRecord[], required — Bbox-filtered, paginated, stable-sorted positions.
      - `mmsi` integer, required — Maritime Mobile Service Identity (9 digits).
      - `lat` number, required — WGS84 latitude.
      - `lon` number, required — WGS84 longitude.
      - `sog` number, nullable — Speed over ground (knots). Null if absent.
      - `cog` number, nullable — Course over ground (degrees). Null if absent.
      - `heading` integer, nullable — True heading (degrees). Null if absent.
      - `navstat` integer, nullable — AIS navigational status code. Null if absent.
      - `ship_type` integer, nullable — AIS ship-and-cargo type code. Null if absent.
      - `name` string, nullable — Vessel name (from static-vessels join). Null if absent.
      - `timestamp` string, required — Position report time, ISO 8601 UTC.
      - `source` string, required — In {fintraffic, kystverket}.
      - `region` string, required — In {baltic, norway}.
    - `sources` AisAttribution[], required — Provenance objects (always present).
      - `source` string, required — Human-readable source label.
      - `license` string, required — License short name.
      - `license_url` string, required — Canonical license deed URL.
      - `attribution_text` string, required — Exact credit string to surface.
      - `modified` boolean, required — True when Sugra transforms the data.
      - `original_url` string, required — Link back to the upstream source page.
    - `coverage_label` string — Honest coverage label - regional near-live, never global, never real-time.
    - `partial` boolean — True when one region's snapshot was unavailable - the response then covers the remaining region(s) only.
  - `meta` SugraMeta, required — Metadata attached to every /api/v1/* response envelope.
    - `endpoint` string, required — Requested endpoint path.
    - `data_time` string, required — ISO 8601 UTC timestamp of the source data, not of the request.
    - `response_time` string, required — ISO 8601 UTC timestamp when this response was produced.
    - `provider` string, required — API name and version.
    - `source` string, nullable — Identifier of the primary upstream source used for this response.
    - `attribution` string, nullable — Human-readable attribution mandated by an upstream source (e.g. a securities regulator or self-regulatory organization). Present only on responses whose source requires the owner and source to be clearly identified. Do not remove or alter it when using the response.
    - `fallback_used` boolean, nullable — True when the primary source failed and a fallback produced the data.
    - `fallback_chain` string[], nullable — Ordered list of sources attempted, in the order they were tried.
    - `cached` boolean, nullable — True when this response was served from the internal cache.
    - `stale` boolean, nullable — True when the cached response was returned after the upstream rate-limited or errored. Clients can use this to detect degraded data.

## Other responses

- `401` — Missing or invalid `x-api-key` header. JSON body with a stable `code` distinguishing `missing_api_key` (no header sent) from `invalid_api_key` (header sent, key not accepted); any other 401 source carries the generic `unauthorized` with its detail as `reason`. Plus `hint`. `plan` is always null on 401 - an unauthenticated request has no plan; quota exhaustion is 429, not 401.
- `422` — Validation Error
- `429` — Daily rate limit exceeded. Check `X-RateLimit-Reset` for the next window.
- `503` — Upstream source is temporarily unavailable. Retry after a short delay.

---

[API](https://skmtc.net/sugra/apis/sugra-api.md) · [All operations](https://skmtc.net/sugra/apis/sugra-api/llms.txt) · [OpenAPI document](https://skmtc-service-staging.skmtc.workers.dev/v1/apis/sugra/sugra-api/versions/d3e3d9c28132/schema)