What Vessel Hunter does: find every ship heading your way, and who to call.

One scan: every ship approaching your facilities

This is the job most commercial maritime teams hate: slow, repetitive, and the moment you finish, it’s already out of date. It’s also the one Vessel Hunter is built around. Pick a fleet, point it at your facilities, and a few minutes later you know exactly what’s inbound and who to call.

1. 01

   Pick your target

   A whole company's fleet, or your own custom list of vessels you've uploaded. Point at one operator and you've selected every ship they run, with no copy-pasting IMO numbers into a spreadsheet.

2. 02

   Set your facilities

   Add the ports, terminals, and yards you actually cover. These are the zones the scan watches, your real-world catchment, not the whole ocean.

3. 03

   Run the scan

   One click. Vessel Hunter checks every facility you watch against the live AIS feed and finds the vessels from your target that are inside the approach radius right now.

4. 04

   Read the inbound list

   Every matching ship, ranked by ETA, with destination, distance, and a live countdown. The job that used to mean an afternoon of cross-referencing is a table you read in seconds.

5. 05

   Reach the decision-maker

   Each vessel comes paired with its owner, manager, and operator, and the key contact behind them. You see who decides, not just what is moving.

A note on honesty: the scan finds vessels currently within the approach radius of the facilities you watch. A target ship still far out at sea appears the moment it enters that radius, so the list is always “who is genuinely near me now,” never a guess. Revealing a contact’s direct email and mobile is a gated action on eligible plans; the inbound list, ownership, and contact identity come standard.

The live AIS feed underneath it

The scan runs on a normalised, continuously updated AIS layer: live positions, course, speed, and navigational status for every commercial vessel under coverage, fused from terrestrial and satellite receivers. You can filter inbound traffic by country, region, port, terminal, or your own geofence. More in the live tracking feature.

A full dossier behind every vessel

Click any ship in the inbound list and the dossier opens: specs, engine, ownership tree, port-state inspections, dry-dock history, casualties, and class standing: the commercial layer that raw AIS doesn’t carry. It’s what lets the scan tell you not just that a ship is coming, but whether it’s worth the call. See the vessel dossier.

The people layer

Every vessel is paired with the company that owns, manages, and operates it, and the verified decision-maker behind each (procurement, technical, operations, agency) with role labels and a freshness flag. This is the layer most AIS providers don’t have: they sell you the position; we add the person who decides. More on the verified operator contacts.

Watchlists and alerts, when you don’t want to scan

The scan answers “who’s near me now.” Watchlists answer “tell me the moment they are.” Save a fleet, owner, port, or custom list and get alerted on inbound, alongside, departing, dry-dock window, or AIS gap, by email, web push, Slack, or webhook. See watchlists & alerts.

When the transponder goes dark

AIS isn’t always on. Vessel Hunter reconstructs an inferred route from port-state filings, satellite radar, and class records, with a confidence score and an evidence chain, so a ship that drops AIS doesn’t drop off your radar. More in beyond-AIS tracking and the data sources.

And the same data by API

Everything the scan surfaces (vessels, contacts, watchlists, alerts) is available through scoped, audit-logged access tokens, so you can drop inbound demand straight into the CRM or workflow your team already runs. See the API.

Built for shipyards, service providers, and port agents. See every feature or pricing.