Strait of Hormuz Traffic Tracker
Daily vessel transits through the world's most important oil chokepoint, from satellite AIS. Roughly 20 million bbl/day of oil (~25% of seaborne oil trade) and ~19% of global LNG trade pass through the strait in normal times. Counts are AIS-visible traffic — a floor, not a ceiling.
Methodology & caveats
Source. Daily transit calls: IMF PortWatch (IMF + University of Oxford), satellite-AIS based via the UN Global Platform, mirrored on the UN OCHA Humanitarian Data Exchange. Updated weekly, Tuesdays ~09:00 ET. History since 2019.
Coverage caveat. Ongoing GPS jamming, AIS spoofing, and vessels running dark (transponders off) mean reported counts understate physical traffic. The gap widened as the war went on. On a rough calibration that matches February 2026 tonnage to the IEA's ~20 million bbl/day estimate, the AIS-visible share of Hormuz oil flow was ~29% in April 2026 and ~2% in August 2026. (During the June 2025 escalation ~1,000 ships/day experienced GPS interference in the Gulf.) For actual volumes, rely on the IEA's monthly Oil Market Report or commercial tanker trackers (Kpler, Vortexa).
Baseline. The 2025 average is the reference for the recovery index. PortWatch revises its history retroactively: the 2025 average was 91.5 vessels/day in the July 2026 release, 75.2 in August, and 85.5 since September. Historical percentages can therefore shift by several points, sometimes more, from one release to the next.
Built with free/open data only. No commercial AIS feeds are used on this page.
Data: IMF PortWatch (HDX) · Satellite-AIS visible traffic. For general information only; not investment advice.