# Met Office Weather DataHub (Site Specific) vs Pirate Weather

> Pirate Weather has a score of 66.2 (B) against Met Office Weather DataHub (Site Specific)'s 45.5 (E). Both do weather current. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 65 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/met-office-datahub-vs-pirate-weather
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/met-office-datahub-vs-pirate-weather.md (~1,700 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/met-office-datahub-vs-pirate-weather.min.md (~380 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/met-office-datahub-vs-pirate-weather.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-05

Pirate Weather has a score of 66.2 (B) against Met Office Weather DataHub (Site Specific)'s 45.5 (E). Both do weather current. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 65 points.

- Met Office Weather DataHub (Site Specific): grade E, 45.5/100, rank #399 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/met-office-datahub.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/met-office-datahub.json
- Pirate Weather: grade B, 66.2/100, rank #162 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/pirate-weather.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/pirate-weather.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Met Office Weather DataHub (Site Specific) for security & auth (+21).

Pick Pirate Weather for reliability (+27), schema & documentation (+53), agent ergonomics (+24), maintenance & community (+65), transparency & trust (+8).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Met Office Weather DataHub (Site Specific) | Pirate Weather | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 48 | 75 | Pirate Weather +27 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 32 | 85 | Pirate Weather +53 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 53 | 77 | Pirate Weather +24 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 66 | 45 | Met Office Weather DataHub (Site Specific) +21 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 30 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 15 | 80 | Pirate Weather +65 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 63 | 71 | Pirate Weather +8 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **45.5 · E** | **66.2 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Met Office Weather DataHub (Site Specific) | Pirate Weather |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Met Office | Pirate Weather |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://data.hub.api.metoffice.gov.uk/sitespecific/v0/point` | `https://api.pirateweather.net/forecast` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | BSD-3-Clause (utilities) | Apache-2.0 (docs and spec), AGPL-3.0 (API code) |
| Tools exposed | none | none |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | none | 2026-09-23 |
| Popularity | none | 907 stars |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | 4/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Met Office Weather DataHub (Site Specific).** Statutory UK weather service, with a FAQ licence to copy, publish and adapt the data. No OpenAPI, llms.txt, SDK or MCP server.

**Pirate Weather.** Named model sources and a documented priority order for every field. No SLA, and the terms call it best effort.

## Before you call either

### Met Office Weather DataHub (Site Specific)

1. Register an application and subscribe it to the Global Spot plan first. The key is tied to that order and shown once
2. Send the key in the apikey header with Accept: application/json, and latitude and longitude as query parameters
3. Add excludeParameterMetadata=true to drop the parameter descriptions from every response
4. Pick the timestep by need. hourly covers 48 hours, three-hourly 168, daily 7 days, and each call counts against the daily limit
5. Stop on a 429. The limit is daily and resets at 00:00 UTC

### Pirate Weather

1. Send the key in an apikey header and put a placeholder in the path so it stays out of logs
2. Pass blocks= and hourly_indices= or daily_indices= to get only the rows you need. The default payload is large
3. Ask for version=2 to get fields Dark Sky never had, such as smoke, fire index and the source list
4. Point historical requests at timemachine.pirateweather.net with a UNIX timestamp after the coordinate
5. Watch Ratelimit-Remaining. The cap is monthly, so a runaway loop can spend it in a day

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