arla

public api for aircraft registration

Aircraft Registration Lookup API (arla) is a small hobby project created by Nicholas Fasching with the goal to provide a free, public, and simple API for getting registration and model information about any given aircraft. Currently, arla is updated daily from the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) aircraft registration database (which comes in the format of CSV files).

This project was originally made to supplement the development of RTL-SDR Radio, and is therefore designed with its goals in mind. Due to only pulling from the FAA, any aircraft registered outside of the U.S. will likely not be found. If you would like extra countries or features, star the repository and make an issue on GitHub so I can work on it!

Huge thanks to:

• Vercel - hosting this website and API for free!
• GitHub Actions - running the daily update script (~7 minutes of compute) for free!
• Supabase - hosting the database for free!
• Federal Aviation Administration - providing aircraft registration information for free!
• adsbdb.com - inspiring this project!