Full disclosure up front: Flyby is our app, and it appears at the end of this list. But we spent years using everything else in this category before building it, and the honest truth is that different tools are good at different jobs. Here's how the landscape actually breaks down in 2026.
The three kinds of satellite apps
- Data-table trackers give you raw pass predictions — rise time, azimuth, elevation, magnitude — for thousands of objects. Deep and precise, aimed at people who already speak the jargon.
- Planetarium apps are sky encyclopedias first: stars, constellations, planets, with satellites as one layer among many. Beautiful for learning the sky; satellite coverage is usually a supporting feature.
- Visibility-first trackers start from a different question — not "what's overhead?" but "what will I actually see tonight?" — and filter everything through your location and conditions.
The classics, and where they shine
Heavens-Above has been the gold standard for pass-prediction data since the early days — meticulous tables, charts, and a huge catalog, free on the web. If you love reading azimuth-elevation tables, it remains excellent. Its trade-off is the learning curve: it hands you data and leaves the interpretation to you.
ISS-focused alert apps do one thing — station passes with notifications — and do it simply. Great starting points, limited ceilings: when you want launches, Starlink, or the rest of the catalog, you outgrow them.
Planetarium apps (the Sky Guide / Night Sky family) are gorgeous and superb at "what star is that?" Most treat satellites lightly — a handful of famous objects, without visibility-quality filtering or launch coverage.
What to actually look for
- Visibility filtering, not just predictions. Thousands of objects pass overhead nightly; almost all are invisible. The question is whether the app knows the difference — sun angle, brightness, and your light pollution included.
- Alerts you can act on. "ISS in 5 minutes, face west" beats a table you have to remember to check.
- A way to find the thing. AR pointing turns "somewhere up there" into "right there."
- Launch coverage with local visibility. Rockets are the most spectacular sky events of all (visible from much farther than you'd think) — most satellite apps ignore them entirely.
Where Flyby fits
Flyby is our attempt at the visibility-first category taken seriously: 30,000+ tracked objects on a live 3D globe, pass predictions that factor orbital geometry, solar angle, brightness, and your local light pollution, alerts timed to the second, AR pointing, and — uniquely — launch tracking with personal visibility windows and a real-time ascent simulation. It's a paid app (7-day free trial, then $39.99/year or $9.99/month), and it's iOS-only, which is the honest caveat to weigh.
If you're just getting started, begin with the free web tools and our beginner guides — how to spot a satellite and how to see the ISS tonight. If you find yourself hooked, that's what Flyby is for.