- Status and closure clock. Open, degraded, restricted or closed, from the 7-day average of ships crossing compared with the Jul–Dec 2025 average, with how many days the current status has held and a band showing the status for every day since 2024.
- Live ships. Switch the console to Live ships to see every vessel broadcasting AIS around the strait, the Fujairah anchorage and the Gulf of Oman, refreshed every 5 minutes. Tap any ship for its name, type, speed and destination.
- Ships crossing. Daily transits split into tankers and everything else, with the normal pace as a reference line.
- Satellite radar. Every Sentinel-1 radar image of the strait from the last week or so, full size, with each ship on open water circled. Radar sees hulls through cloud and at night, whether or not the transponder is on.
- Oil flow. An implied barrels-per-day figure from tanker capacity, plus Brent, WTI and the spread between them.
- Bypass routes. The three pipelines that move Gulf crude to water without the strait, and tanker calls at the export and bypass ports.
- Reroutes. Traffic at Bab el-Mandeb, Suez and the Cape of Good Hope against their own normal.
- Incidents. Headlines naming the strait, grouped by story and ranked by severity.
AIS counts are the cleanest daily measure, but they arrive a few days late and miss ships that switch off their transponders. Radar is the opposite: fresher and blind to identity. When the two disagree, for example radar sees many large hulls while AIS transits sit near zero, ships are moving without broadcasting. Oil prices show what the market thinks the disruption is worth; a wide Brent–WTI spread prices Middle East supply risk specifically.
Transits and port calls: IMF PortWatch. Radar: Copernicus Sentinel-1 via Microsoft Planetary Computer, with a land mask from ESA WorldCover 2021 (CC BY 4.0). Oil prices: EIA daily spot via FRED. Headlines: shipping press and news search. Pipeline routes and terminal positions are approximate and drawn for orientation, not navigation. The globe's sensor modes are adapted from God's Eye View (MIT).
Is the Strait of Hormuz open right now?
The tracker rates the strait from the 7-day average of ships crossing it, compared with the Jul–Dec 2025 average: under 25% of normal is closed, under 60% restricted, under 85% degraded, otherwise open. The rating, the counts and the date they run to are shown at the top of the tracker and refresh every 5 minutes.
How long has the Strait of Hormuz been closed?
By the tracker's rule, the strait has been closed for 94 straight days, from July 10, 2026 through October 11, 2026, the latest day of published transit counts. Counting every closed stretch since the first on March 6, 2026, it has been closed for 204 days. The coloured band under the transits chart shows the status for every day since 2024.
Where does the ship count come from?
Daily transit counts come from IMF PortWatch, which counts ships crossing the strait from their AIS transponder signals and splits them by vessel type. PortWatch publishes with a lag of a few days, so the tracker always shows the date the counts run to.
Can I see individual ships in the Strait of Hormuz live?
Yes. Switch the tracker to Live ships (or open quantparadise.com/hormuz/#live) to see every vessel broadcasting AIS around the strait, the Fujairah anchorage and the Gulf of Oman, drawn on the tracker's own map and refreshed every 5 minutes. Tap a ship for its name, type, speed and destination.
Can it see ships with their transponders switched off?
Yes, within limits. Every one to two days a Sentinel-1 radar satellite passes over the strait. Radar sees steel hulls whether or not a transponder is broadcasting, so the tracker counts the bright contacts on open water after each pass. It can tell a large hull from a small one, but not a tanker from a warship.
How much oil normally moves through the Strait of Hormuz?
The US Energy Information Administration puts it at about 20 million barrels a day in 2024, roughly a fifth of world oil consumption. The tracker scales that baseline by how much tanker capacity is currently crossing to give an implied flow. That figure is an estimate, not a measured flow.
How much oil can bypass the strait?
Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline to Yanbu on the Red Sea, the UAE's Habshan–Fujairah line, and Iran's Goreh–Jask line can carry crude to water without crossing the strait. Their combined nameplate capacity is well below the strait's normal flow. The tracker maps all three and tracks tanker calls at the bypass ports.
Is it "Strait of Hormuz" or "Straight of Hormuz"?
Strait of Hormuz. A strait is a narrow sea passage between two landmasses, here Iran to the north and Oman's Musandam peninsula to the south. "Straight of Hormuz" is a common misspelling of the same place.
What happens to oil prices if the Strait of Hormuz is blocked?
About a fifth of the world's oil normally passes through it, so a blockade removes supply that the bypass pipelines can only partly replace. The tracker shows the market's answer live: Brent and WTI spot prices, the gap between them, and how many tankers are still crossing.
Are there mines in the Strait of Hormuz?
The tracker does not detect mines. Its incident feed collects the latest reports naming the strait, including mine-clearing operations and attacks on ships, grouped by story and ranked by severity, with links to the original reporting.
Is there a live map of the Strait of Hormuz?
Yes. The tracker above is a free 3D map of the strait showing every ship broadcasting its position, shipping lanes, oil terminals and the pipelines that bypass the strait, plus satellite radar images with each ship circled.
Is this a trading signal?
No. It is situational data about shipping and oil. Quant Paradise publishes a separate TQQQ options signal (see above), and nothing in the tracker itself is a recommendation to buy or sell anything.
