Choosing a weather API seems like something simple until you actually start comparing your options. You stumble upon one whose plan seems ideal, but then you also see that the forecast is limited to only a few days.
Then you see another one with decades of historical data, but uh-oh you have to pay extra for alerts. There’s one that charges by request, another one charges by record, and those ‘free’ plans they all advertise, well…
Those could give you anything from 100 calls a month to 1,000 records a day.
But besides just the price tag, there are a number of things you need to factor in.
| Between Jan 2023 and Dec 2024, approx. 150 billion API attacks have been recorded, showing that APIs are becoming more prominent targets especially considering how more and more apps rely on them to exchange data and access. – Akamai |
How many days of forecast do you get? What’s the historical data based on? Can you request something like pollen levels or information on air quality? Do you get alerts on severe weather, too?
Weather APIs Worth Your Time & Money
While there are a number of weather APIs available, we’ll go over 4 of the most prominent ones and what makes each special.
Visual Crossing
It makes sense to start the list with Visual Crossing because its Timeline API puts current conditions, alerts, 15-day forecasts, and more than 50 years of historical records in one service. For you, that means you don’t need to join results from who knows how many different APIs.
You can download the data as either JSON or CSV, and thanks to the Query Builder, you can create and test a request before you touch any code.
The good thing is that the live map, History Dashboard, documentation, and pricing tools are all really easy to find, so it’s not like you’ll get lost.
There’s a free access option that covers 1,000 records a day, and monthly plans start at $35. Visual Crossing weather intelligence is especially useful when you want to compare an event that’s coming to similar conditions in the past. Just check the details of the plans first.
Security-wise, Visual Crossing uses API-key authentication, key rotation, plus it recommends server-side requests to keep credentials out of client-side code.
OpenWeather
If you want pretty much every type of familiar weather data, OpenWeather can give that to you. The only thing is, you’ll need to put in some work to find the right endpoint.
OpenWeather’s catalog has current conditions, alerts for severe weather, air pollution, map layers, several forecast products, and historical records that go back more than 47 years.
One Call groups several datasets for one location, and other endpoints deal with specific forecast ranges or visual layers.
You can get minute-by-minute data for the next hour, info on 15-minute intervals for the next 48 hrs, hourly forecasts, or longer daily outlooks.
On the site, you’ve got APIs, maps, dashboards, widgets, documentation, and pricing.
In terms of available plans, some APIs include up to a million free calls a month, while OneCall has a separate allowance of 1,000 free daily calls before you start getting charged. These 2 limits aren’t interchangeable.
API-key authentication, multiple keys for credential separation/rotation and it forces account-level request limits.
WeatherAPI.com
If weather isn’t the only thing your app needs, WeatherAPI.com is worth checking out.
This one also includes pollen counts, air quality, tide times, marine conditions, astronomy, and solar data. All of these are part of the same service, as well as current conditions and forecasts, of course.
With weather getting more and more unpredictable, you definitely need those last two.
One very practical thing about this API is that the way you enter a location depends on what’s most convenient for you. City names, coordinates, ZIP codes, METAR identifiers it all works.
The website is clear and cut. Endpoints and differences between plans are all laid out in tables, and if you’d rather start with a free account, you’ll get 100,000 monthly calls, a day of history, and a 3-day forecast. Paid plans start off at $7/month.
If you need a longer history, you’ll have to choose a higher plan, so keep that in mind.
They use API-key authentication, immediate key regen, HTTPS requests, plus plan-level rate limits to control API abuse.
Meteosource
When you start researching weather APIs, you’ll see that too many of them stop giving useful daily forecasts at around 1 or 2 weeks. Not Meteosource, though.
The free plan covers 7 days, Startup goes up to 10, and the Standard plan goes up to 30. You can also request current conditions, minute and hourly forecasts, warnings, climate normals, maps, air quality, maritime information, and historical weather.
For those who work with solar and/or wind power, there’s a separate plan called Renewables that starts at $19 per location.
The website’ll let you test a forecast on a particular location right away, and then it’ll point you towards the documentation, tools for historical data, and a page where you can compare plans.
Free access provides you with 400 calls/day, but commercial use is off-limits.
Meteosource uses a unique API-key auth, the X-API-Key header, which keeps credentials out of URL parameters.
Conclusion
How will you know if you chose the wrong API? Well, you won’t know until way later, when you find out that you have to pay extra for alerts and that the ‘historical’ data isn’t what you thought it was.
The smartest thing you can do about this is to narrow your options down to 2 or 3 that seem the best, and then test out parts of their services your project needs the most.
