10 Free Sources of Satellite Data in 2026
Ten free sources of satellite data in 2026: Sentinel-2, Landsat, NASA viewers and disaster imagery, plus country guides for the USA, UK, Canada, Germany and Brazil.
Summary
Free satellite data comes from a handful of open programs: Europe’s Copernicus (Sentinel-2 at 10 m, roughly 5-day revisit), the USGS Landsat archive (30 m, back to 1972), NASA’s open data services, and browser viewers built on top of them. The ten sources below cover viewing, downloading and analysis, with no payment required for any of them.
- Pera Portal free tier: Unlimited free Sentinel-2 browsing with 45+ pre-configured spectral indices (NDVI, NDWI, EVI, etc.) viewable in-browser, no setup and no credit card
- Copernicus Browser: The source of truth for Sentinel data, for anyone who wants to search and download the rasters
- USGS EarthExplorer: The Landsat archive back to 1972, the longest continuous satellite record there is
- NASA Earthdata Search: Hundreds of science datasets in one search, for research-grade work
- NASA Worldview: Whole-Earth imagery from MODIS and VIIRS, often hours old
- Google Earth: The easiest general-purpose viewer, with a mosaic that can be months to years old
- Zoom Earth: Near-current weather and environmental viewing
- Maxar Open Data Program: Free high-resolution imagery released during major disasters
- Weather satellite viewers (BoM SatView, NOAA GOES viewer): Geostationary imagery updating every few minutes
- National open-data programs (Digital Earth Australia, National Map and their counterparts): Country-level archives and property-scale viewers
Looking for sources specific to your country? We keep dedicated guides for Australia, the USA, the UK, Canada, Germany (also auf Deutsch) and Brazil.
Overview
Whether you want to look at your own property, monitor vegetation across a region, or pull rasters into a GIS, there is a free source that covers it. This guide walks through the ten worth knowing in 2026, what each is best at, and where each one stops being enough.
Understanding Real-Time Satellite Imagery
Many people search for “live satellite view” or “real-time satellite images” of their house, but despite what movies suggest, live satellite imagery isn’t available with current technology. What you see on mapping platforms is usually imagery captured weeks or months ago. The closest things to live are the weather satellites (minutes old, but kilometre-scale pixels) and NASA’s Worldview (hours old, 250 m to 1 km pixels).
What Free Data Can and Can’t Do
- Most free imagery basemaps are updated every few months to years
- Free downloadable data tops out at 10 m resolution (Sentinel-2): you can see fields and buildings as shapes, not details
- High-resolution imagery with clear detail (individual vehicles, fence lines) is commercial
- You cannot task a free satellite: if nothing captured your site cloud-free recently, there is nothing to download
With that calibration done, here are the sources.
1. Pera Portal Free Tier
Our own Pera Portal has a free tier built on Sentinel-2: unlimited browsing with 45+ pre-configured spectral indices (NDVI, NDWI, EVI and the rest) computed in the browser, so you can check vegetation or water condition without downloading anything or setting up software.
Key Features:
- Unlimited free Sentinel-2 viewing, no credit card
- 45+ spectral indices ready to apply, plus custom band ratios
- The same interface then searches 100+ commercial satellites when a project needs sharper detail
2. Copernicus Browser
The European Union’s Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem is the definitive source for Sentinel data. Sentinel-2 images every point on Earth at 10 m resolution roughly every 5 days, and the browser searches, previews and downloads the full rasters.
Key Features:
- Free registration, full-resolution downloads
- Sentinel-1 radar and Sentinel-3 ocean/land products alongside Sentinel-2
- The standard choice when you need the actual data in a GIS
3. USGS EarthExplorer
EarthExplorer is the front door to the Landsat archive: 30 m resolution reaching back to 1972, which makes it the longest continuous satellite record of the Earth’s surface. If the question is “what did this place look like decades ago”, this is the answer.
4. NASA Earthdata Search
NASA Earthdata Search indexes hundreds of datasets across NASA’s missions. It is built for research rather than casual browsing, and it is where you go for atmospheric, ocean and land products beyond plain imagery.
5. NASA Worldview
Worldview shows the whole planet from MODIS and VIIRS, usually within hours of the overpass. The pixels are coarse (250 m at best), but for fires, smoke, dust and floods at regional scale it is the fastest free view there is.
6. Google Earth
Google Earth remains the easiest way to look at high-resolution imagery anywhere on the globe. The catch: the basemap is a mosaic whose capture dates you can’t control, often months to years old, and the imagery can’t be downloaded as data. With Google Earth Pro desktop being discontinued, the web version is the one with a future.
7. Zoom Earth
Zoom Earth provides frequently updated imagery focused on weather and environmental conditions, and is an easy way to track storms, fires and other near-current events.
8. Maxar Open Data Program
Maxar releases high-resolution imagery for free during major natural disasters worldwide, supporting emergency response and humanitarian work. Outside disaster events the archive stays closed, but during one it is often the sharpest free imagery available.
9. Weather Satellite Viewers
Geostationary weather satellites image continuously, and their agencies publish free viewers: Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology runs SatView and NOAA runs the GOES image viewer for the Americas. Updates land every few minutes, which makes these the only genuinely near-live free sources, at kilometre-scale resolution suited to weather rather than property viewing.
10. National Open-Data Programs
Most countries run their own satellite and aerial open-data platforms, and they often beat the global sources for local detail. Australia has Digital Earth Australia (analysis-ready time series back to 1988) and National Map (browser viewing with property boundaries), plus state platforms like NSW’s SIX Maps and Queensland Globe; our guide to free satellite data for Australia covers them all. Other countries’ equivalents are covered in the dedicated guides: USA, UK, Canada, Germany and Brazil.
Tips for Making the Most of Free Satellite Imagery
1. Match the platform to the question. Viewers (Google Earth, Zoom Earth, National Map) answer “what does it look like”. Data platforms (Copernicus Browser, EarthExplorer, Earthdata) answer “what can I measure”.
2. Check the capture date, always. The single most common mistake with free imagery is treating a years-old basemap tile as current.
3. Define your requirements before searching. Area of interest, time range, resolution and bands. Search filters do the rest.
4. Use the built-in analysis tools. Indices and time-series tools inside the platforms often answer the question without any downloads.
5. Download selectively. Pull the tiles and dates you need rather than whole datasets; the archives aren’t going anywhere.
When Free Satellite Data Isn’t Enough
Free platforms cover an enormous range of uses, and if you’re simply curious about your own property, they’re genuinely all you’ll ever need. But if you’re using imagery professionally, you’ll eventually hit the resolution wall:
| Source | Resolution | What you can actually see |
|---|---|---|
| Landsat (free) | 30 m | Regional land cover: a sports field is roughly one pixel |
| Sentinel-2 (free) | 10 m | Field-scale vegetation patterns; buildings are blurs |
| Commercial (Geopera) | up to 30 cm | Individual vehicles, fence lines, stockpiles, single trees |
The difference matters the moment you need to measure rather than look: tracking earthworks on a mine site, auditing stockpiles, mapping erosion along a specific creek line, monitoring vegetation by the row rather than by the field, or proving site conditions on a particular date. Free sensors also can’t be tasked: if no satellite happened to capture your site cloud-free last month, there’s nothing to download.
Commercial imagery used to mean opaque quotes and weeks of back-and-forth. We publish transparent per-square-kilometre pricing for both tasking and archive, our guide on how to buy satellite imagery covers the process end to end, and every order arrives analysis-ready: orthorectified, pansharpened, colour-balanced and mosaicked (here’s exactly what that involves).
If free data has taken your project as far as it can go, explore available imagery through Pera Portal or get in touch to discuss your project.
