How Gate Camp Checker works
What is a gate camp?
A gate camp is a group of players parked at a stargate in EVE Online, waiting to attack ships as they jump through.
Stargates are the only fixed routes between star systems, so a camped gate turns an ordinary jump into an ambush you cannot see coming until you are already in it.
Camps concentrate at chokepoints — the low-security systems connecting major trade hubs and the border gates into low-sec and null-sec — and systems like Tama, Uedama, and Rancer are camped so consistently that their names are shorthand for danger among pilots.
A typical camp uses fast-locking tackle ships to pin targets, backed by heavier damage dealers; some add warp-disruption bubbles in null-sec, or smartbomb battleships that kill shuttles and frigates instantly.
Data sources
Kill reports come from zKillboard's RedisQ stream, consumed through the r2z2 relay, which delivers every killmail posted to zKillboard within seconds of it appearing there.
Each killmail is enriched with position and ship data from CCP's ESI API, the official EVE Online interface.
The map itself — systems, regions, stargates, and security ratings — comes from CCP's Static Data Export (SDE), so system pages render even when no kill data exists for that system.
The attribution rule (≤100 km)
Gate Camp Checker attributes each kill report to the closest stargate within 100 km of the victim's position; kills further from a gate are not counted as gate-camp evidence.
100 km covers the decloak radius, smartbomb range, and the drift of a fight that starts on the gate, while excluding station ganks, belt fights, and anomaly kills that say nothing about the gate.
Each end of a gate pair is scored independently, so the Tama-side gate can read CAMP while the matching gate on the other side reads SAFE.
Threat classification
SAFE means zero kills were attributed to that gate-end in the selected time window (the default window is the last 2 hours) — an absence of evidence, not a guarantee of safety.
CAMP means at least one kill was attributed to that gate-end in the window.
CAMP* (live) means more than 10 kills in the window and the most recent kill less than 10 minutes ago — the strongest signal that the campers are still sitting on the gate.
Refresh cadence & retention
Kill reports stream in continuously from zKillboard's RedisQ feed, and live views refresh every 60 seconds.
System pages print the timestamp of the data they were rendered from, so you always know how fresh the answer is.
Kills older than 6 hours are dropped from the store — a camp that dissolved this afternoon should not colour tonight's route check.
Known limitations
Kill reports typically reach zKillboard 15–30 minutes after the kill happens, so a camp that formed in the last few minutes can still read SAFE here — treat SAFE as favourable odds, not certainty.
Only kills that someone posted to zKillboard are counted — a camp that has not killed anyone yet, or whose kills were never posted, is invisible to this site.