Today, we are excited to announce that Aquaplot Distance Calculator is now in open beta. This means you can sign up with Aquaplot without an invitation code.

The Distance Calculator is our first step on our journey to build a unified routing and analytics platform for the maritime industry. Aquaplot Distance Calculator allows our users to easily determine sea distances between any two points on earth connected via open sea.

What sets it apart from other solutions is that routes are actually planned and calculated for each request individually. We do not use a predefined network of waypoints but instead plan and optimize routes that go around any obstacles. Basically, we construct these routes similar to how a human would when looking at a map.

This approach has two main benefits. First, we do not need to maintain any sort of network which has to be adjusted every time the underlying data changes. This reduces manual work and allows for lower price points at shorter update cycles. Second, it enables us to improve our product in the future in ways competing tools cannot easily match. Today, we treat land masses as obstacles and find routes around them. Once we have other data integrated such as marine protected areas, routes will also go around them depending on your vessel characteristics (e.g. diving boats might actually want to route inside these areas), resulting in more accurate information for you. Our algorithms are also capable of incorporating regulatory requirements - as we follow our development roadmap you will see routes following traffic separation schemes, keeping safety distance to the shore and more.

What you can expect as a beta user:

1. Although we do not have any special pricing available, we will gladly extend or top up any free trial account during beta phase. Simply use the contact form or write an email and tell us what you need.
2. You might experience varying calculation times. For the time being, we have deactivated all learning capabilities of our algorithm. Our engineers continue to tweak the system with the knowledge we gather from the beta phase. This will improve quite quickly over the next few days.
3. We are constantly extending our test sets to make sure results are accurate. However, since the number of possible combinations of points is infinite, it is impossible to have full test coverage. In case the route displayed looks odd, please let us know by sending an email to support@, including a screenshot of the route.
4. We strive for a highly robust and always available service. However you might experience short outages when our engineers perform large-scale maintenance tasks. Do not solely rely on the Distance Calculator until we are out of the beta phase.

To join us on our journey, sign up for a free trial account and follow us on Twitter or this blog, where we will write more about our vision, the origin of Aquaplot and our proprietary technology for fast routing in continuous environments.