Google Weather API (Maps Platform) vs Xweather Weather 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.

Xweather Weather API

A public OpenAPI file with 236 operations, a hosted MCP server in the official registry and a free tier of 15,000 accesses a month suit agents. REST credentials travel only in the query string, per-minute limits are unpublished, and the group terms bar commercial use of free plans and passing data to third parties unless a service description allows it.

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

Xweather Weather API

1. Check success and error.code on every response. Application errors such as invalid_location return HTTP 200 with success false
2. Send fields, limit and plimit. The docs put a 15-day hourly forecast at about 600 KB, and about 25 KB with three fields
3. Read X-Cost-Tokens after each call. Cost is the endpoint multiplier times the intervals requested, so narrow from and to
4. For MCP, send Authorization: Bearer <client_id>_<client_secret> and avoid the api_key query parameter, which puts the secret in the URL
5. Add include_tags or include_tools to the MCP URL to load only the tool groups the task needs
6. On 429 read Retry-After and the X-RateLimit-Reset-* headers. maxhits_min clears at the next minute, maxhits at the period reset