Weather APIs work like a bridge between a weather service’s database and websites or apps that want to show weather information. When an app or website needs to display the weather, it sends a request to the weather API. Then, the API gets the weather details from its database and sends them back to the app or website.
Weather API solutions are designed for developers and businesses that need to integrate weather information into their websites, mobile apps, or software systems.
Below are some of the best weather API solutions that let you integrate accurate and comprehensive weather data into your applications.
Weatherstack
With real-time weather stats and historical data, Weatherstack is a fantastic weather API that is trusted by more than 75,000 brands worldwide, including Microsoft, Schneider Electric, and Warner Bros. Their API is filled with weather information from the multi-year history to the very current weather forecast.
Some of the notable features of this API include:
- Easy checking on millions of location data
- Super-fast uptime speed clocking almost a 100 percent
- Accurate and dependable information
- Ability to handle more than a billion requests in a day
- And a lot more!
This API has a 100% free plan to start with, but you can always pick one of their paid plans, starting at just $9.99/month. It is really simple to integrate this into your application. What you need to do is, access the API endpoint and configure the data to display weather information to the world.
And it supports all major programming languages, including PHP, Python, JQuery, etc.
Meteomatics
Meteomatics provides global weather data spanning from historical records dating back to 1979 to the most up-to-date information, accurate forecasts and climate data. This Swiss company offers a comprehensive weather solution designed for businesses, facilitating seamless integration of their powerful API into applications through open-source data connectors compatible with all common programming languages.
Meteomatics’ Weather API covers over 1800 weather, ocean, and environmental parameters, granting users the following capabilities:
- Simultaneous querying of multiple parameters for single or multiple sites within a single interface.
- Real-time data retrieval with an impressive response time of a few milliseconds.
- Direct access to over 7 petabytes of real-time data.
- “On the fly” downscaling, providing worldwide coverage at a resolution of 90 meters.
- Over 1640 updates per day, ensuring constant availability of the most recent data.
Backed by reliable connectors a first-class customer service, businesses can confidently access and leverage the necessary weather data for their operations. To make it easy to get started, Meteomatics provides instant API access through a free trial, allowing up to 1,000 queries.
For advanced capabilities, their Business plan provides a range of features that are certainly worth exploring. Pricing is based on configuration to accommodate specific requirements.
Frogcast
Frogcast is a cutting-edge weather forecasting API developed by expert meteorologists. It provides probabilistic forecasts for every weather parameter anywhere in the world.
Key features of Frogcast API:
- High Accuracy: Incorporates data from over 20 global weather models, satellite imagery, and in-situ data for enhanced precision to generate accurate forecasts for the next 15 days
- Ultra-Local Forecasts: Weather forecasting modeling with a resolution of up to 1km and topographic details at 90m precision
- Global Coverage: Tailored forecasts for specific regional needs.
- Easy Integration: User-friendly API, requiring no complex coding.
- Smart probabilistic forecasts: 10 confidence intervals (quantiles) provided for every forecast parameter to quantify the uncertainty associated with a forecast.
- Flexible Data Access: A full range of weather paramaters and customizable options.
Advanced technologies used:
- Utilizes a mix of geospatial big data, probabilistic forecasting, high-resolution modeling, and machine learning for superior forecasting accuracy.
Frogcast is known for its accuracy and reliability, and is chosen by top companies for its weather data. Frogcast forecasts are used in thousands of locations in several countries.
Subscription plans:
- Free Plan: Includes basic features such as 15-day forecasts and real-time weather updates, limited to 400 requests.
- Paid Plans: Start at €5/month, offering extended features and technical support.
- Custom Plan: For specific and large data needs, providing tailored solutions.
Tomorrow.io
Top businesses and developers trust Tomorrow.io for accurate and up-to-date weather information. This weather API has a modern interface for delivering fast and hyper-accurate on your application and website. You get four different weather APIs from this service, like —
- Weather Forecast & Real-Time API for accurate weather prediction for any global location.
- Historical Weather API to get hourly and daily weather insights of the last 20 years.
- Weather Monitoring API for the hyperlocal weather forecast of 14 days with a configured combination of parameters.
You can leverage its rich data catalog with 60+ weather data fields, including air quality, pollen count, and fire index, to build your app for web and mobile. The process of API integration is also effortless and can be done easily using its detailed documentation.
Individuals and startups can use the Tomorrow.io API service for free. Teams and other companies needing to deal with multiple projects can opt for its Enterprise plan with many customizable features.
OpenWeather
Probably one of the most popular out there, OpenWeather API is great for weather data such as forecasts, current conditions, historical, weather warnings, and much more. They also have past and present air pollution data like carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and ozone.
To integrate this weather API, all you need to do is sign up on their website and get your API key via email. After a few hours, the key will get activated and ready to be used on your applications. However, you need to keep in mind not to process requests without the API key. Be sure to use your API key in every API call.
They have a completely free plan to start with, but you can upgrade anytime, starting at $40/month if you wish to access more features.
AccuWeather
AccuWeather is another great option for weather APIs that have accurate minute-by-minute and hourly forecasts about any location on Earth. They have a set of 9 APIs that you can make use of, such as:
- Current weather updates
- Forecast
- Alerts
The data of AccuWeather can be presented in more than 40 languages and dialects. It comes with a free trial of 50 calls per day and an allowance of only one key/developer. After that, you can choose any of their paid plans, starting at $25/month. The free trial is sufficient to check integration and performance as a sample.
Weatherbit
With the Weatherbit API, you get access to a ton of exciting features like:
- Current and historical weather data
- Super speed response time
- Machine learning forecast accuracy
- Up to 99.9% uptime
- Collection of data from various sources, including stations
It supports over 30 languages and comes with a free plan as well as paid ones starting at $35/month. However, the free one cannot be used for commercial purposes.
You can instantly access your API key in the dashboard when you sign up for an account. Depending upon which plan you choose, the features will act upon that, but you can upgrade it anytime.
HERE
As per the Ovum report, HERE is ranked highest when it comes to location platforms. Kudos to their great overall features, which include their weather API, that lets you access:
- Forecast reports
- Current weather conditions
- Severe weather alerts
- Important information about sun and moon rotations
- 90+ languages, including Thai, Arabic, and Russian
You can get access to the API by either signing up for their freemium plan or one of their paid ones starting at $449/month. It is slightly on the expensive side, but then it includes a suite of location APIs that justifies it. On a side note, it is trusted by brands like Samsung, Intel, Bing Maps, AWS, and many others.
Benefits of using weather APIs to build products
Using weather APIs has a lot of benefits and advantages over building your weather application. Some of them are highlighted below:
Cuts your effort by half
Instead of spending hours building an app from scratch, using weather APIs can significantly reduce that amount of effort. With the solutions mentioned in this article, you get access to large databases of weather and historical information that can be easily incorporated in your application.
Cost-effective
We all know the kind of investment that goes into building something from scratch. It can be huge and denting for any business. On the other hand, using weather APIs can be extremely budget-friendly.
Automatic updates
When you use weather APIs, your application automatically receives updates regarding the latest weather forecast and other information without you having to engineer it.