The 7 best platforms to find free Earth observation data

There are massive amounts of free-to-use satellite data out there, if you know where to look. Agencies like ESA, NASA, and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) publish data from missions like Sentinel and Landsat at no cost, and in most cases, you can use it for commercial work as well as research.

But where to start? Each platform has its own way of doing things, and some have an easier learning curve than others.

We’ve picked seven platforms for different needs, from quick visual checks to historical research and analysis with code. The list includes UP42, where you can access free Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8 imagery alongside commercial data. Each entry explains what’s available and who it’s best suited to, to help you begin.

As for the others, we picked them to give a good variety of options. A few are point-and-click while others are built for developers. And after the list, we'll cover what you can do with free imagery, as well as how to pair it with higher resolution commercial imagery if needed.

1. UP42

The UP42 platform is known for bringing the world's leading EO data providers together, as well as for its ease-of-use and options for users of every size, from individual researchers to enterprise organizations.

Along with all the commercial providers, it offers two free catalog collections: Sentinel-2, from the European Space Agency, and Landsat 8, a collaboration between the USGS and NASA.

UP42 uses STAC to organize imagery and metadata, making data easier to find and access through a consistent structure.

Here's what you get:

• Sentinel-2: Surface reflectance product at 10, 20 or 60 m resolution. It covers Europe from 2017 and the whole globe from 2018, delivered as 110 by 110 km scenes.
• Landsat 8: Surface reflectance product at 30 m resolution, plus a 100 m thermal band. It's global from 2013, delivered as 185 by 180 km scenes.

To order it:

1. First, create an account. UP42 accounts can only be created with business emails, so individuals can't register with a private email address.
2. Open the catalog in the console, draw your area of interest, and filter by collection, date, and cloud cover.
3. Add the scenes you want to your cart. The first time you order a collection, you may need to request access and accept its license (EULA).
4. Check out. The completed order will land in your UP42 storage.

The full ordering steps are in the docs, if you need more details. A huge plus here is that the free data sits next to the commercial catalog. When a 10 m view isn't enough, you can order a sharper image of the same spot without switching platforms.

Best for: teams who want free Sentinel-2 and Landsat data in the same place as commercial imagery, so they can switch to a higher resolution without switching platforms.

2. Copernicus Browser

The Copernicus Browser is the official viewer for Sentinel-1, 2, 3, and 5P data, run by the EU's Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem. You can browse without signing in, and a free account unlocks many more capabilities.

They have the most options in terms of Sentinel data: Sentinels 1 through 6, which include optical and radar imagery as well as atmospheric gas measurements, along with composite mosaics and elevation data. You can swap between band combinations, compare two dates with a split screen, build timelapses, and download either a picture or the full raw product. It's also an easy way into Sentinel-1 radar, which can capture imagery through cloud cover and at night.

Best for: quick visual checks and before-and-after comparisons of Sentinel data, with no coding needed.

3. USGS EarthExplorer

EarthExplorer is the main door into the USGS archive, including Landsat imagery going back to 1972. Landsat data has been free since 2008. You'll need to create a free account to download it.

The interface looks dated, but it works. You can search through many datasets at once and  preview scenes before downloading. For bigger jobs, use the Bulk Download Web Application, or automate searches and downloads with the Machine-to-Machine (M2M) API.

Best for: looking back over decades. If you want to see how a city or coastline has changed since the 1970s, this is where the Landsat archive lives.

4. NASA Worldview

Worldview lets you browse over 1,200 satellite data products, many of them within hours of being captured. You can animate imagery over time, and an Events tab points you to natural hazards happening right now, such as wildfires and tropical storms.

Most of the imagery is coarse, so you won't see buildings. What you will get, though, is a fresh view of the whole planet every day. Browsing is open to anyone. You just need a free Earthdata Login account to download data.

Best for: following big events like wildfire smoke or hurricanes as they unfold, with a fresh view of the whole planet every day.

5. Google Earth Engine

Earth Engine is a cloud platform for analyzing satellite data with code. The catalog is huge, and the big draw is that you can run analysis over whole countries or decades without downloading anything.

It's free for verified noncommercial projects, within limits. Since April 27, 2026, those projects get a monthly compute quota: 150 EECU-hours on the default Community tier, or 1,000 on the Contributor tier. Commercial use is paid.

Best for: researchers and nonprofits who are comfortable writing code and want to analyze large areas or long time spans without downloading anything.

6. Microsoft Planetary Computer

The Planetary Computer hosts a large catalog of open data, including Sentinel and Landsat, on Azure. Like UP42, every dataset is indexed with STAC, and you can search it through a public STAC API or browse it in the web Explorer.

You can explore the data using STAC-compatible Python tools and reuse those tools across other STAC catalogs, , although authentication and dataset details may differ.. 

Best for: developers building their own data pipelines in Python. Code written for its STAC API also works with many other catalogs, so nothing you build is locked in.

7. ASF Data Search (Vertex)

Vertex is the search tool of the Alaska Satellite Facility, one of NASA's data archives, and it's built around radar imagery. It holds the Sentinel-1 archive alongside L-band data from the new NISAR mission, and ready-made products from NASA projects like OPERA. 

Within Vertex’s interface, you can search by drawing an area on the map or by scene name. Specialist searches like Baseline and SBAS find matching image pairs for InSAR, a SAR technique for measuring small ground movements. Its free HyP3 service will even process Sentinel-1 scenes into analysis-ready products in the cloud, within a credit allowance. Downloads need a free Earthdata Login, the same account you'd use for NASA Worldview.

Best for: anyone getting serious about radar who needs processed, ready-to-use SAR products.

What can you do with free EO imagery?

Ten-meter pixels won't show you a parked car, but they're useful for many landscape-scale applications. Here are some common uses.

• Check crop health. Sentinel-2's red and near-infrared bands let you calculate NDVI, a simple index that shows how green and active plants are. It might not show you individual plants, but farmers and insurers use it to spot stressed fields early.
• Map floods. Radar images from Sentinel-1 show standing water clearly, even through most types of clouds.
• Track deforestation. Comparing scenes from a few months apart makes new clearings easy to see, and the Landsat archive lets you trace forest loss back for decades.
• Measure burn scars. After a wildfire, the shortwave infrared bands on Sentinel-2 and Landsat show users which areas were burned down, and how badly.
• Watch cities grow. Stacking Landsat images from the 1980s to today gives a clear picture of urban sprawl. Entire new cities have formed since the 80s: check out Shenzhen, for example.
• Follow coastlines and water bodies. Shoreline erosion and shrinking lakes both show up well at 10 to 30 m.
• Train and test models. Free data is a cheap way to build training sets and prototype a machine learning model before you spend money on anything sharper.

How to use free and commercial imagery together

Free data is great at covering lots of ground. Commercial data is great at showing detail, sometimes down to 30 cm or less, during the time range that you need it.

Use Sentinel-2 or Landsat to monitor a large area on a regular schedule and flag anything that changes. When something stands out, like a new clearing in a forest or a damaged levee, order a high-resolution image of just that spot.

Landsat goes back to the 1970s and Sentinel-2 to 2015, so free data is often the only way to see what a place looked like years ago. Pair that history with a fresh commercial image to show both the long-term trend and the current state in detail.

Free imagery is a useful starting point for building and testing a workflow. When you need more detail or additional coverage, you can add commercial data. Different sensors and products may require adjustments to how you prepare and analyze the imagery, so check those requirements before bringing a new source into your workflow.

Free satellites pass over on a fixed schedule, and clouds can hide your area for weeks. Commercial tasking lets you request a capture during a specific time range, and commercial radar can see through most types of clouds at very high resolution. Use these to fill the holes in your free time series when timing matters.

Keep everything in one place

Juggling separate portals and accounts eats up time. On a platform like UP42, the free Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8 collections sit next to commercial archive and tasking, and you order all of it the same way. Your free and paid data end up in the same storage, so it's easy to swap between them.

Convinced yet? Create your own free account on the UP42 platform here.

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