What Broadcastify Is
Broadcastify is a streaming platform that hosts live audio feeds from scanner radios operated by volunteers across the United States and in many other countries. It is owned by RadioReference, the largest online database of public safety radio frequencies and trunked system information.
When you listen to a scanner feed online, you are almost certainly listening through Broadcastify or a site that draws its feeds from Broadcastify's infrastructure. The platform hosts tens of thousands of active feeds covering police, fire, EMS, weather, amateur radio, and other public service radio. For scanner listening, it is the de facto standard.
The feeds themselves are operated by volunteers who set up their own scanner radios and configure them to stream audio to the platform. Broadcastify provides the infrastructure; the volunteers provide the equipment and uptime.
Finding Your Local Feeds
By State and County
The most reliable way to find feeds for a specific location is to browse by state and county on the Broadcastify website. The directory is organized geographically, and most counties that have active scanner coverage will have at least one feed listed. County-level browsing shows you all feeds for that jurisdiction, including which ones are currently live versus offline.
Alternatively, this site organizes scanner feeds by state, county, and city and links directly to the relevant Broadcastify feeds for each location. If you are looking for a specific city or county, browsing through our state pages or using our ZIP code search will get you to the right feeds quickly.
Feed Status Indicators
Each feed on Broadcastify shows a status indicator. Green means the feed is currently streaming live audio. A gray or offline indicator means the feed is down, either because the volunteer's equipment is offline or because the underlying radio channel has gone encrypted and there is nothing to stream. If your local feed shows as offline, check whether there are other feeds for the same county, or look at neighboring county feeds.
Free vs. Premium: What's Actually Different
Broadcastify's free tier gives you access to live audio for all public feeds. You can listen to any active feed without paying anything. The main limitation of the free tier is a 30-second streaming delay, which is intentionally built into the platform.
Broadcastify Premium, which costs around $15 per year at the time of this writing, reduces the streaming delay to approximately 15 seconds on supported feeds. Premium also gives you access to audio archives, letting you replay previous hours of scanner audio for any archived feed. The archive feature is one of the more useful premium benefits for research, journalism, or reviewing incidents after the fact.
For casual listening, the free tier is entirely sufficient. For time-sensitive monitoring during active incidents or for archive access, premium is worth considering. The delay difference between free and premium is noticeable but not dramatic.
Understanding the 30-Second Delay
All Broadcastify feeds have a built-in streaming delay. The standard free-tier delay is approximately 30 seconds, meaning what you hear is 30 seconds behind what is actually being transmitted on the radio channel at that moment.
This delay is intentional and required by Broadcastify's terms of service. The purpose is to prevent feeds from being used in real time to interfere with active law enforcement operations. A 30-second delay is long enough to make real-time tactical use impractical while still making the feed useful for general situational awareness.
For most listening purposes, whether monitoring weather emergencies, following breaking news, or general interest listening, 30 seconds makes essentially no difference. You are hearing what happened very recently, not what is happening right now, but for nearly all civilian listener purposes the distinction is irrelevant.
Using the Broadcastify Mobile App
Broadcastify has official apps for both iPhone and Android. The apps provide access to the same feed directory as the website and include a favorites system that lets you bookmark feeds you listen to regularly. You can toggle between your bookmarked feeds quickly without having to search for them each time.
The app also supports background playback, meaning the feed will continue playing if you switch to another app or lock your phone. This is useful for monitoring a feed while using your phone for other purposes.
One practical limitation of the app is that it can be battery-intensive if you run it for extended periods, particularly during active incidents. Keeping the phone plugged in is recommended if you plan to monitor for more than an hour.
Listening on Desktop
The Broadcastify website works in any modern browser without any plugins required. Navigate to a feed's page and click the play button. Audio streams directly through the browser using HTML5 audio.
If you are monitoring feeds on a desktop computer during a major weather event or breaking news situation, the website is often more practical than the app because you can open multiple browser tabs with different feeds and switch between them quickly.
What to Expect When You First Listen
For first-time listeners, scanner audio can take some time to interpret. A few things to expect:
Periods of silence are normal. Radio channels are not constantly active. Between calls, you may hear nothing but squelch noise or carrier tones. Quiet periods can last several minutes on lower-volume channels.
Jargon and codes are common. Many agencies use ten-codes, signal codes, or agency-specific shorthand. Our guide on police scanner codes covers the most common terms you will encounter.
Audio quality varies. Feeds hosted by volunteers on good equipment in favorable locations sound clear. Feeds with poor antennas, interference, or marginal internet connections may be scratchy or cut out periodically.
Not every call is dramatic. The majority of scanner traffic is routine: traffic stops, welfare checks, minor accidents, medical calls for non-critical patients. High-severity calls are a small fraction of total volume on most feeds.
Tips for Getting More Out of Broadcastify
Bookmark multiple feeds for your area. Most counties have more than one active feed. Having the county sheriff, city police, and fire/EMS feeds bookmarked means you can quickly jump between them depending on what you are trying to monitor.
Know which feeds are most reliable. Within a county, some feeds have higher uptime and better audio quality than others. Spending some time sampling different feeds helps you identify which ones are worth relying on.
Check neighboring county feeds during major incidents. Large-scale events like wildfires, major accidents on interstates, or multi-agency law enforcement operations will generate activity on feeds from multiple counties simultaneously. Broadcastify's geographic browsing makes it easy to pull up adjacent county feeds.
Use the archive feature if you have premium. The audio archives let you go back and review what was on a feed during a specific time window. This is particularly useful for reconstructing the timeline of an incident after it has concluded.
Written by
PoliceScannerFinder Research Team
The PoliceScannerFinder Research Team studies publicly available scanner feeds, emergency communication systems, and public safety radio technology. Our mission is to make scanner listening approachable for beginners while providing accurate, responsible information about how emergency radio works across the United States.