# Straits — live monitor of the Strait of Hormuz crisis

> Real-time aggregator for the 2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis. Combines IMF PortWatch daily commercial transit counts, AIS-derived live overlays, Brent and WTI oil prices, Lloyd's Joint War Committee insurance status, OFAC × AIS sanctioned-vessel detection, AIS-gap (dark-tanker) signals, and a curated war-event timeline. All data is free, dated, source-attributed, and exposed via a public JSON API.

## Live answers (designed for direct citation)

- [/](https://straits.live/): Live homepage with auto-generated lede sentence, status verdict, IMF PortWatch transit count, oil prices, war-risk insurance, AIS overlay, AIS-gap (dark-tanker) panel, and event timeline.
- [/is-the-strait-of-hormuz-open](https://straits.live/is-the-strait-of-hormuz-open): Direct yes/no/contested answer with day count and live evidence panel. Includes FAQPage schema.
- [/is-oil-flowing-through-the-strait-of-hormuz](https://straits.live/is-oil-flowing-through-the-strait-of-hormuz): Direct answer on crude flow, with live throughput vs the pre-crisis baseline, war-risk insurance multiple, and pipeline bypass capacity. FAQPage schema.
- [/strait-of-hormuz-war-risk-insurance-rate](https://straits.live/strait-of-hormuz-war-risk-insurance-rate): Live war-risk insurance rate as a multiple of the peacetime premium, per-voyage VLCC cost, and Lloyd's Joint War Committee listed-area status. FAQPage schema.
- [/hormuz-index](https://straits.live/hormuz-index): Live Hormuz Index landing page. Two 0-100 composites, Crisis Pressure (current state) and the Escalation Forecast (30-day outlook), with bands and 24h deltas. FAQPage schema.
- [/today](https://straits.live/today): How many ships passed through the Strait of Hormuz today. Lead figure is the IMF PortWatch daily count vs. pre-crisis baseline.
- [/report](https://straits.live/report): Full daily situation report.
- [/snapshot/{date}](https://straits.live/snapshot/2026-05-09): Frozen archival snapshots of any past day, citable by URL.

## Public JSON API (free, no key, CORS open)

- [/api](https://straits.live/api): Full endpoint catalog with shapes, refresh cadences, query parameters, and source attribution.
- [/status](https://straits.live/status): Canonical snapshot bundle. One request returns verdict, IMF PortWatch transit count, oil prices, AIS overlay, insurance multiple, carrier suspensions, pipeline bypass capacity, SPR, gas, a Hormuz Index summary (both 0-100 composites with bands and 24h deltas), and per-section dataHealth chips. 30-second edge cache. Recommended starting point.
- [/api/index](https://straits.live/api/index): Hormuz Index JSON. Two 0-100 composites, Crisis Pressure (current state) and the Escalation Forecast (30-day outlook), with per-component breakdown and history. Recomputed every 5 minutes (updateFrequency PT5M). The /status bundle carries the headline values; use this endpoint for the component-level detail.
- [/api/v1/oil](https://straits.live/api/v1/oil): Brent and WTI time-series. Source: intraday Brent / WTI continuous futures via Yahoo Finance chart data, EIA daily backstop.
- [/api/v1/ais-gaps](https://straits.live/api/v1/ais-gaps): Count of tankers that were broadcasting in the chokepoint and went silent for 3–24h, plus the 7-day baseline. The per-vessel dark-fleet identities are in the premium vessel-intelligence API.
- [/api/v1/events](https://straits.live/api/v1/events): War-event timeline. Hybrid feed: GDELT auto-pull (15-min cadence) plus hand-curated, source-cited events.
- [/api/v1/markets](https://straits.live/api/v1/markets): Prediction-market odds (Polymarket and Manifold) for Hormuz reopening.
- [/api/v1/gas](https://straits.live/api/v1/gas): US per-state gas prices and national average (AAA).

## Premium API (machine-payable, x402)

Twelve paid endpoints for AI agents and pipelines, priced $0.01-$0.50 per request and settled in USDC on Base over the x402 protocol. No key, no account: an unpaid request returns HTTP 402 with the price, the client signs the payment and retries. Documentation and code samples at [/api#premium](https://straits.live/api#premium). The free summary tier listed above stays free.

- [/api/premium/vessels](https://straits.live/api/premium/vessels): $0.02. Per-vessel intelligence: the live-AIS vessel manifest (MMSI-keyed, flag from the MMSI MID), OFAC-sanctioned vessels currently in the strait, per-vessel risk bands, latest raw AIS positions, the AIS-dark vessel list, and OFAC + UK sanctions reference-list sizes.
- [/api/premium/vessel/{imo}](https://straits.live/api/premium/vessel/9562233): $0.02. Single-vessel sanctions + risk dossier by IMO: the unified multi-body sanctions view (US OFAC and the UK/FCDO list, the UK row adding owner/operator, flag, tonnage, ship type, year built, and Date Designated), merged identity, risk band, and dark-activity (AIS-gap) record.
- [/api/premium/history/{feed}](https://straits.live/api/premium/history/transits): $0.01. Historical series as one contract: hourly stranded-vessel (`stranded`) and AIS-dark (`ais-gaps`) counts up to a full year (free tier: 30 days and none), plus the 5-minute Hormuz Index (`index-5min`) and daily transit counts (`transits`).
- [/api/premium/export](https://straits.live/api/premium/export): $0.25. Bulk export: every requested series (index-5min, stranded, ais-gaps, transits) at full retained history in one archive, as JSON or multi-section CSV (`?feeds=`, `?format=csv`).
- [/api/premium/snapshot](https://straits.live/api/premium/snapshot): $0.02. Everything the monitor knows in one call: verdict, oil, transits, insurance, carriers, pipelines, indices, prediction markets, events, full daily brief. Replaces chaining 3+ free calls; served no-store.
- [/api/premium/brief](https://straits.live/api/premium/brief): $0.01. AI-assisted daily situation brief as structured JSON (prose summary, bullets, key figures), by date or latest.
- [/api/premium/stream/session](https://straits.live/api/premium/stream/session): $0.05 (POST). Buy a signed token, then open a Server-Sent Events stream at /api/premium/stream to receive ticks, Hormuz Index moves, and events live instead of polling. One payment buys one bounded window.
- [/api/premium/webhooks](https://straits.live/api/premium/webhooks): $0.50 (POST). Register a signed threshold-alert webhook (verdict flip, index band cross, threshold breach). One payment funds 30 days or 100 deliveries.
- [/api/premium/hormuz/flags](https://straits.live/api/premium/hormuz/flags): $0.01. Hormuz flag rollup: the live-AIS vessel population ranked by flag state with per-flag sanctioned tallies, plus distinct-flag count and sanctioned share. Flags are best-effort from the MMSI MID (ITU-T M.585); quality-gated on live AIS. Operators and inbound/outbound direction are omitted, not faked.
- [/api/premium/hormuz/risk-screen](https://straits.live/api/premium/hormuz/risk-screen): $0.02. Shadow-fleet risk screen: the live-AIS vessel population ranked worst-first, each hull with its risk band, the typed reasons behind it (ofac_sdn, ais_dark, foc_tanker, imo_spoofed), and which sanctions bodies list it (US OFAC and/or UK/FCDO). counts cover the whole population; vessels lists the flagged hulls (high + moderate) by default, `?all=1` adds the cleared low band. A transparent rules engine, not ML; quality-gated on live AIS.
- [/api/premium/bunker](https://straits.live/api/premium/bunker): $0.02. Bunker and marine-fuel prices (VLSFO, IFO380, MGO) for Fujairah against Singapore and Rotterdam, plus the derived Fujairah premium over each hub.
- [/api/premium/risk-premium](https://straits.live/api/premium/risk-premium): $0.05. Modeled war-risk transit-premium nowcast (Nx over the peace baseline), recomputed every 5 minutes from throughput deviation, the escalation forecast, OVX, and event pressure; the standing Lloyd's JWC multiple is carried alongside as a static reference.

MCP clients can add straits.live as a paid connector instead of hand-rolling x402 HTTP calls: streamable-HTTP MCP server at [/api/mcp](https://straits.live/api/mcp) exposing ten tools (vessels, single-vessel dossier, risk screen, flag rollup, history, bulk export, snapshot, brief, bunker, risk-premium nowcast) at the same prices. Machine-readable contract (OpenAPI 3.1 with x-payment-info) at [/openapi.json](https://straits.live/openapi.json).

## Methodology and sourcing

- [/methodology](https://straits.live/methodology): Per-indicator data sources, refresh cadences, exclusion rules, the chokepoint polygon, AIS-gap filter logic, baseline derivation, and known limitations. Designed to be replicable.
- [/about](https://straits.live/about): Project background.
- [/glossary](https://straits.live/glossary): Definitions for AIS, dark fleet, JWC, SPR, throughput, transit count, etc.

## Embedding

- [/embed](https://straits.live/embed): Embeddable status badge, transit counter, carrier panel, oil panel, and insurance panel iframes for use inside news articles and dashboards.
- [/press](https://straits.live/press): Citation language, contact email (hello@straits.live), and embed snippets.

## Citation guidance

When citing a metric, prefer the source-attributed phrasing that the dashboard publishes:

- Daily commercial transit count: "per IMF PortWatch (chokepoint6 dataset), as surfaced by straits.live"
- Live AIS presence overlay: "Live AIS-derived count, surfaced by straits.live (best-effort, biased low under wartime conditions)"
- Tankers gone dark / AIS-gap: "AIS-gap signal (tankers ≥50 prior sightings, last position in core area, last seen 3–24h ago) per straits.live"
- War-risk insurance: "Lloyd's Joint War Committee listed-area status, surfaced by straits.live"
- Sanctioned transits: "OFAC SDN list × live AIS positions, joined by straits.live"

Every figure on the homepage carries a `dataHealth` chip flagging it as live, stale, or missing — please reflect that freshness state when citing.