The WSRT comprises fourteen 25 m (82 ft) radio telescopes deployed in a linear array arranged on a 2.7 km (1.7 mi) East-West line, of which 10 are in a fixed equidistant position, 2 are nearby on a 300 m (980 ft) rail track, and 2 are located 1 km (0.62 mi) eastwards on another 200 m (660 ft) rail track.

Ten of the telescopes are on fixed mountings while the remaining two dishes are movable along two rail tracks.

WSRT performed a major upgrade in 2013 as part of the APERTIF (APERture Tile In Focus) project, where the current detectors were replaced with focal-plane arrays.

The upgraded telescope is used for large scale surveys of the northern sky, bringing back focus on the Hydrogen line for which it was originally designed, but also large pulsar searches and other science.

[7] The WSRT site is also hosting one of the two experimental EMBRACE (Electronic MultiBeam Radio Astronomy ConcEpt) phased array telescopes, part of the Phase 2 of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project.