TravStats vs. AirTrail
AirTrail is an open-source, self-hosted personal flight tracker (GPL-3.0), under active development. It runs in Docker and keeps its data in PostgreSQL. If you are choosing between the two, you are choosing between two tools that agree on the fundamentals — your server, your database, open source — and differ in focus.
At a glance
Section titled “At a glance”| TravStats | AirTrail | |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting | Your server (Docker) | Your server (Docker) |
| Database | PostgreSQL + PostGIS | PostgreSQL |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Focus | Travel logbook: flights, cruises, stays, trips | Flights, in depth |
| Adding flights | Drop a booking email, PDF or boarding pass → automatic; manual form | Manual form with flight-number lookup; list imports |
| Flight-number lookup | AirLabs, Aviationstack, AeroDataBox, OpenSky | adsbdb by default, AeroDataBox optional |
| List imports | Flightradar24 CSV, any logbook CSV, own spreadsheet | MyFlightradar24, App in the Air, Jetlog, TripIt, Flighty, byAir, JetLovers, OpenFlights, Miles & More, AirTrail JSON |
| Recorded flight tracks | No | Yes — GPX, KML, FR24 and FlightAware CSV, readsb traces |
| Map | Routes, heatmap, trips, 3D globe | Flat map or globe, satellite basemap, optional aviation charts |
| Cruises | Yes | No |
| Hotels / stays | Yes — a domain of its own since 2.6.0 | No |
| Currencies and costs | 155 currencies, ECB rates | — |
| Achievements | 270+ | — |
| Multiple users | Yes, built for about 1–10 | Yes, flights can be shared between users |
| Single sign-on (OIDC) | No | Yes |
| Two-factor / passkeys | Yes, per account | — |
| Public share links | No | Yes |
| API | REST + OpenAPI, scoped Personal Access Tokens | REST, API keys |
| Export | Whole-logbook spreadsheet (re-importable), JSON, database backup | CSV, JSON (re-importable), YAML via API |
| Mobile | Web (responsive); a Companion app in testing, beta | Web (responsive) |
A dash means the AirTrail documentation does not describe it — not necessarily that it cannot be done.
Where TravStats wins
Section titled “Where TravStats wins”1. The paperwork does the typing
Section titled “1. The paperwork does the typing”AirTrail’s add-flight form is good: type a flight number, and it fills
in the route and airline. TravStats goes one step earlier. You drop the
booking confirmation — an .eml, an .msg, pasted text, a PDF — or
photograph the boarding pass, and the flight is read out of it and
shown on a review screen before anything saves. The same drop zone
takes cruise and hotel confirmations and decides on its own what it is
looking at.
One honest caveat: the parser is at its best with a local language model (Ollama), which wants real RAM. Without it, built-in templates cover single-leg bookings on common European carriers. See Imports & Parsers.
2. More than flights
Section titled “2. More than flights”AirTrail is a flight tracker and says so. TravStats also records cruises — ship, ports of call, sea days, the route on the map — and hotel stays as a domain of their own, and groups all of it into trips. Countries are counted by evidence — a night slept, a port call, a day on the ground — rather than by airports touched. If your travel history includes a ship or a week somewhere you drove to, that is the difference. See Trips and Countries & passport.
3. Money and games
Section titled “3. Money and games”Prices can be recorded in the currency they were paid in, and totals are converted with ECB rates rather than added across currencies (Money & currencies). And 270+ achievements unlock on their own as you log.
Where AirTrail wins
Section titled “Where AirTrail wins”1. Aviation detail
Section titled “1. Aviation detail”AirTrail goes deeper into the flight itself. You can attach a recorded track — GPX, KML, a Flightradar24 or FlightAware CSV, a readsb trace — and the map shows the path actually flown, coloured by altitude, instead of a great-circle arc. The map can show airport weather, day and night, and aviation charts. Custom fields let an admin add whatever an enthusiast wants to track. TravStats draws arcs and does none of this.
2. More ways in
Section titled “2. More ways in”AirTrail imports from nine other apps and services, among them App in the Air, TripIt, Flighty and Miles & More, plus its own JSON export. TravStats has one dedicated flight importer (Flightradar24) plus a column-mapping wizard for everything else. If your history sits in one of those apps, AirTrail reads it as-is.
3. Sign-in and sharing
Section titled “3. Sign-in and sharing”AirTrail supports single sign-on via OpenID Connect, so it plugs into the identity provider you may already run. TravStats has local accounts with two-factor and passkeys, but no SSO. AirTrail can also publish a share link and put one flight on several users’ logs. TravStats has no public surface at all — a privacy feature for some, a missing feature for others.
4. A narrower tool
Section titled “4. A narrower tool”If you only fly and want only a flight log, AirTrail’s scope is exactly that, without cruise, lodging and trip screens you will never open.
Migrating your data from AirTrail
Section titled “Migrating your data from AirTrail”TravStats has no AirTrail importer. The CSV export works through the column-mapping wizard under Settings → Import → “From any logbook (CSV)”. Export from AirTrail as CSV (Settings → Export), then map:
| AirTrail CSV | TravStats field |
|---|---|
date | date |
from | departure airport |
to | arrival airport |
flightNumber | flight number |
airline | airline |
aircraft | aircraft |
aircraftReg | registration |
seatNumber | seat |
note | notes |
Leave departure and arrival unmapped, or convert them first:
AirTrail writes full ISO 8601 timestamps, and the wizard reads local
times as HH:MM:SS. A row with a time it cannot read is reported as
an error and skipped, not imported. Seat class and flight reason have no
column in the wizard today. The import runs as one batch and can be
reverted whole — see Import & Export.
Verdict
Section titled “Verdict”If flying is the hobby — tracks, charts, registrations, every import source — AirTrail is the more specialised tool, and it is a good one.
If flights are one part of how you travel, and you would rather forward confirmation emails than type, TravStats covers more of the journey: the cruise, the hotel, the trip that holds them, and what it cost. Both keep your data on your own hardware; that decision is already made either way.