Chokepoint transit monitor
Daily vessel transits through the world's strategic maritime passages — Suez, Panama, Hormuz, Bab-el-Mandeb, Malacca, Cape of Good Hope and more. A disruption at any of these moves freight rates worldwide; watch the trend before it hits the market.
Movement by passage
Each passage against its own prior-month baseline — the one figure comparable across chokepoints.
Of the 19 passages carrying enough daily volume to read a trend, 14 are holding within 10% of their prior month; the sharpest of 5 exceptions is Bab el-Mandeb Strait, down 20%.
more transits than the prior monthfewerOnly passages above 25/day are charted; lighter-traffic straits stay in the grid below, where a few transits distort the percentage.
As of 23 Aug 2026. Transit data is currently delayed — the source feed has not updated in 9 days.
Transit counts are satellite-AIS-derived daily figures covering 28 strategic chokepoints. Change is the latest 30-day average versus the prior 30 days. Read each chokepoint against its own history — the detection rate differs per passage, so the absolute counts are not comparable across chokepoints, and the most recent 1–3 days are provisional (they revise upward as more AIS is processed), which is why we headline the 30-day average rather than the latest day. Scope: commercial cargo and tanker vessels only (the cargo count splits into container, dry-bulk, general-cargo and ro-ro); fishing, naval and other non-commercial craft are not counted. A transit is one crossing of the passage per voyage (a ship counts once as it passes, not entry and exit separately). The northbound / southbound split is derived from each transiting vessel's AIS course — a circular mean of its heading, kept only where the crossings align on a single axis — since the raw daily totals are undirected.
Live AIS presence
Vessels in our live AIS feed within ~50 nm of each strait right now — the real-time complement to the transit estimate above. The Direction column splits the moving vessels by heading, so you can see which way the traffic is flowing — the north/south read the transit totals can't give. Shown only where the corridor has a clean transit axis. A sample from our AIS coverage, not a census.
Ships avoiding Bab el-Mandeb route around the Cape — price the diversion| Chokepoint | Vessels | Tankers | Bulkers | Boxships | Gas | Moving | Avg speed | Direction |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bosporus Strait | 133 | 26 | 25 | 10 | 1 | 62 | 7.4 kn | — |
| Dover Strait | 86 | 10 | 15 | 10 | — | 51 | 10.7 kn | Southwestbound56% Northeastbound44% |
| Oresund Strait | 60 | 3 | 5 | 2 | — | 38 | 9.9 kn | — |
| Gibraltar Strait | 34 | 2 | 15 | 6 | — | 31 | 8.0 kn | — |
| Suez Canal | 21 | 1 | 9 | 7 | — | 3 | 8.5 kn | Southbound88% Northbound12% |
| Panama Canal | 10 | — | 2 | 4 | — | 2 | 3.8 kn | Northwestbound54% Southeastbound46% |
| Taiwan Strait | 6 | — | 5 | 1 | — | 5 | 7.6 kn | Southwestbound88% Northeastbound12% |
| Ombai Strait | 5 | 1 | 4 | — | 1 | 5 | 11.6 kn | — |
| Sunda Strait | 5 | — | 2 | 1 | — | 5 | 10.4 kn | — |
| Bohai Strait | 4 | — | 3 | — | — | 4 | 10.1 kn | — |
| Cape of Good Hope | 2 | — | 1 | — | — | 2 | 12.4 kn | Eastbound95% Westbound5% |
| Korea Strait | 1 | — | — | — | — | 1 | 12.0 kn | Southwestbound89% Northeastbound11% |
| Luzon Strait | 1 | — | 1 | — | — | 1 | 10.1 kn | — |
| Malacca Strait | 1 | — | — | 1 | — | 1 | 12.0 kn | — |
| Torres Strait | 1 | — | — | — | — | 1 | 16.5 kn | — |
| Yucatan Channel | 1 | — | — | — | — | 1 | 9.7 kn | — |