F
Flightradar24
👤 Mikael Robertsson & Olov Lindberg (Aviation obsessives, not insiders. Started 2006 as a hobby, opened the network in 2009, sold no equity for 18 years.)🌐 siteLinkedIn
Two Swedish aviation geeks wired up receivers in 2006, then opened the network in 2009. Strangers finished it.
Will it work? · our read
Nearly uncopyable. A rival can copy the app in a month and the network never. But the signal itself is public, and the feeders are volunteers who owe FR24 nothing.
01How the money moves
Volunteers feed ADS-B data from 50,000+ receivers
→
Free map draws 5M+ users a day, paid for by ads
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1M+ subscribers pay from $34.99/yr; industry buys the data
02The numbers
SEK 418.8M (about $41M)FiledFY24 revenue (filed)
2024-08source:
418,793 KSEK — Flightradar24 AB accounts, FY to Aug 2024
The 5M+ free users who open the map each day are the ad inventory. fr24 /about
EBITDA SEK 273M, about 65% of revenue, on 36 staff. No outside investor for 18 years.
🔒
You have the verdict. Members get the work behind it.
- The CENTS scorecard — where it's strong, where it's soft
- The founder's key move, and the counter-move
- How it could die — the evidence, and how sure we are
- The case against our own call
- A 🚀 launchpad prompt — the case, as a plan for your business
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allabolag — Flightradar24 AB (556895-1213) filed accounts: revenue 418,793 KSEK, profit 217,492 KSEK, accounts year 2024. Employee count (36) and a computed EBITDA figure (273,363 KSEK) are on the company overview page, not the accounts page.Mainsights, 4 Sept 2025: Sprints Capital takes a 35% minority stake at about SEK 4.1bn EV (15x EBITDA); EBITDA SEK 273m on revenue SEK 420m, FY to Aug 2024; 36 staff; income from subscriptions, advertising and data sales.Flightradar24 — About: hobby project in 2006, network opened to anyone in 2009, 50,000+ receivers, 250,000+ flights/day, 5M+ users/day, 100M+ downloads, used by Airbus, Boeing and Embraer.Flightradar24 — Subscription plans: "Join the 1,000,000+ subscribers"; Gold $34.99/year, all prices in USD.Flightradar24 — How it works: "more than 50,000 receivers on seven continents and in space".
Revenue is Flightradar24 AB's filed statutory accounts (org 556895-1213, FY to Aug 2024), read directly off allabolag's Bokslut table in a real browser: Omsättning 418,793 KSEK, Årets resultat (net profit) 217,492 KSEK. The 36-employee count is not on that accounts page — it sits on allabolag's separate company-overview tab ("Antal anställda: 36", sourced there to SCB/Bolagsverket/Skatteverket), confirmed in the same browser session. The USD figure is our conversion at the ECB rate for 2024-08-30 (10.2241 SEK/USD) = about $41.0M; the company reports in SEK only. The filing's own closest profit line is "Resultat efter finansnetto" (profit after financial items) = 273,811 KSEK — there is no EBITDA row in the statutory accounts. Allabolag's overview tab separately publishes a computed "EBITDA 2024: 273,363" key figure (also UC-sourced), and an independent M&A brief quoting the deal press release gives SEK 420m revenue, SEK 273m EBITDA and 36 staff for the same fiscal year. We use "EBITDA SEK 273M" on the card because two independent parties (Allabolag's key figures and the M&A brief) converge on that rounded number; the filing itself does not label any line EBITDA. Note the fiscal year ends in AUGUST, not December. On the 2025 Sprints Capital deal we use the SEK 4.1bn valuation from that brief; several outlets headlined "US$500 million", which does not convert — SEK 4.1bn was about $433M at the 2025-09-04 ECB rate (9.4604) — so we treat the $500M and the widely repeated "$175M to the founders" as loose, and exclude both. Subscribers (1,000,000+), receivers (50,000+), daily users (5M+) and downloads (100M+) are the company's own unaudited marketing claims, cited as such. Gold pricing was read in a real browser with the URL verified inside the read ($34.99/year; the $77.88 shown beside it is the struck-through monthly-equivalent, not a second tier) because the price is client-side rendered and absent from the raw HTML. Both allabolag tabs are client-rendered SPA pages that return blank via plain WebFetch — they were opened in a real (unauthenticated) browser instead, with the URL checked inside the render. Bolagsfakta (403) and LinkedIn via plain fetch (999) would not open, so we did not rely on them; the founder profile was confirmed in a browser. No drama here: no pivot, no near-death, no rescue. They opened the network in 2009 and compounded for 18 years before selling a single share. We never score you.