Google Weather API (Maps Platform) vs OpenWeather One Call API

Google Weather API (Maps Platform)

Covered by the Maps Platform SLA, 99.9 per cent with service credits. History is 24 hours only, and bulk data isn't available.

OpenWeather One Call API

1,000 free calls a day, then $0.0015 a call, or $0.001 on the agent lane. The main API takes the key only as the appid query parameter.

Google Weather API (Maps Platform)

1. Ask for only the days or hours you need, one location a call. Every call is one billable event
2. Page with pageSize and pageToken rather than asking for 240 hours at once
3. Check the coverage page before promising alerts. Coverage is by country
4. Refetch rather than cache. The Maps terms give no caching window for weather content
5. Restrict the key to the Weather API and your server IPs in the Cloud console

OpenWeather One Call API

1. Sign up on the agent lane with POST https://agents.openweathermap.org/v1/accounts and keep the data key. It's shown once
2. Check GET https://data.openweathermap.org/account/balance for credit. No data response carries a cost or balance
3. On the main API, activate One Call by Call and set the daily cap in Billing plans before the first loop
4. Pass units=metric. The default is Kelvin
5. Use exclude=minutely,alerts on 3.0, or the 4.0 timeline step you need, to shrink responses