About the data
What the numbers mean and where they can mislead. LiftRadar isn't an official source: reports can be late or wrong, so check the resort's own website before you go.
Sources
Every number starts with a report published by the resorts, by their regional or national reporting service, or by their slope map. LiftRadar reads those reports and puts them in one format. The full list is on Data sources, and each resort's page links to the reports it was built from.
Not every resort has a live report. Some have no source we can read yet, or one whose terms don't allow it. We list them with their size and “No report”, or leave them out.
Timing
We read every report twice a day, at about 08:40 and 13:40 Vienna time, all year. Resort pages show two times:
- Checked
- When we last read the resort's report.
- Resort's last change
- When the resort last updated it. Reporting systems can refresh this daily without any number changing, and slope maps can keep it for days while the same lifts stay open.
They're highlighted when an open resort's report couldn't be read in the latest run, or is more than 7 days old. Many sources give no report time at all, in France, Finland, Czechia and Spain among others. There we can't tell an old report from a current one, so a resort that stops updating can still read as open.
Status
- Open
- The resort reports that it's open. In most countries it needs at least one open slope, because lifts also run for hikers outside the season. French resorts count what's scheduled to open later that day, and some show everything closed overnight, so they can read closed in the morning and open at midday.
- Closed
- The resort reports that it's closed. We show 0 open lifts, slopes and km, and no snow depths, because closed resorts' reports often still carry last season's numbers.
- No report
- The resort hasn't reported for 14 days (for example before the season), we couldn't read its report for more than 2 days, or we don't read a live status for it yet. Only the area's size is kept. A 0 here means “not reported”, not that every lift is closed.
When a resort's site is down or has changed, it keeps its last status, lifts and slopes for up to 2 days.
Snow
Mountain and valley are the highest and lowest depth a resort reports, on its slopes or at its measuring stations. They aren't always comparable between countries:
- Switzerland: most resorts don't report depths, so we use the nearest SLF stations. These measure open ground, not pistes, and can be a few km from the ski area.
- Finland: no resort reports its piste depth. Valley depth is natural snow at the nearest weather station, often in the lowlands.
- No depth: resorts read only from a slope map have none, and neither do a few others.
Regional reports keep a resort's old values until it clears them, so check the date of the last snowfall.
Lifts and slopes
- One ski area is one resort. Linked villages reported separately, such as those of the SkiWelt, appear once under the area's name. Their snow depths are those of the village that reported last.
- Total slope km is usually the size the resort advertises, or else OnTheSnow's or skiresort.com's figure. Resorts count this differently, some with ski routes. Where no size is published we add up the reported slope lengths, which can be far too low.
- Open km is the length of the open slopes, added up. It's only as complete as the source, so it can run low, and some open resorts don't have it.
- Lift and slope counts can differ from the advertised ones, because slope maps include practice lifts and carpets: the SkiWelt map lists 147 lifts, the area advertises 81. Some resorts report lifts only.
- Lift types and slope difficulties appear where a source lists them. Slope colours follow each country's system, so French green and blue are both “easy”. Km per difficulty don't add up to the total km.
Avalanche danger
The level (1–5) is the highest of the day in the resort's warning region, from the official avalanche service listed on Data sources. It's a summary for one point per resort, so a resort spanning two regions shows only one. Read the full bulletin before going off-piste.
It's missing outside the season, when no bulletin is valid, and where we have none to read: Austria outside Tirol, Finland, and lower ranges elsewhere, such as the German uplands or the Vosges.
Map
Each resort is one point, which marks the area, not a lift station. Its region is the one that point lies in, so an area spanning a border is listed under one side.
On the map, a resort's outline and marker come from its lifts and pistes in OpenSkiData, rebuilt every week: the marker is at the resort's point when that's in its area, and otherwise at the bottom station nearest to it. 718 of the 729 resorts have an outline; the others are only a marker. Where neighbouring resorts share a linked area, the split between them is approximate. Zoomed in, the map shows the pistes and lifts.
History
Data has been collected since 24 October 2026, and nothing earlier exists. Resort pages show the key numbers of the last 365 days.
For developers
All the data is free to read as JSON: the files, their format and how to poll them are on API.