# Met Office Weather DataHub (Site Specific) vs Visual Crossing Weather API

> Visual Crossing Weather API has a score of 60.3 (C) against Met Office Weather DataHub (Site Specific)'s 45.5 (E). Both do weather current. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 43 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/met-office-datahub-vs-visual-crossing
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/met-office-datahub-vs-visual-crossing.md (~1,750 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/met-office-datahub-vs-visual-crossing.min.md (~380 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/met-office-datahub-vs-visual-crossing.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

Visual Crossing Weather API has a score of 60.3 (C) against Met Office Weather DataHub (Site Specific)'s 45.5 (E). Both do weather current. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 43 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
- Visual Crossing Weather API: grade C, 60.3/100, rank #251 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/visual-crossing.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/visual-crossing.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Met Office Weather DataHub (Site Specific) for security & auth (+26).

Pick Visual Crossing Weather API for reliability (+18), schema & documentation (+42), agent ergonomics (+25), payments & pricing (+10), maintenance & community (+43).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Met Office Weather DataHub (Site Specific) | Visual Crossing Weather API | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 48 | 66 | Visual Crossing Weather API +18 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 32 | 74 | Visual Crossing Weather API +42 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 53 | 78 | Visual Crossing Weather API +25 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 66 | 40 | Met Office Weather DataHub (Site Specific) +26 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 40 | Visual Crossing Weather API +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 15 | 58 | Visual Crossing Weather API +43 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 63 | 61 | Met Office Weather DataHub (Site Specific) +2 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **45.5 · E** | **60.3 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Met Office Weather DataHub (Site Specific) | Visual Crossing Weather API |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Met Office | Visual Crossing |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://data.hub.api.metoffice.gov.uk/sitespecific/v0/point` | `https://weather.visualcrossing.com/VisualCrossingWebServices/rest/services/timeline` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | BSD-3-Clause (utilities) | none |
| Tools exposed | none | 1 |
| 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 | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | none | none |
| Popularity | none | none |
| 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.

**Visual Crossing Weather API.** History from 1970, current conditions and a 15-day forecast from one endpoint. Key only in the query string on the REST API.

## 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

### Visual Crossing Weather API

1. Always pass include= and elements=. A bare call returns days, hours and current for every element and burns records
2. Count records before a backfill. Hourly data is 24 records a day, so a year for one place is 8,760
3. Pass unitGroup=metric. The default is US units
4. Use the MCP server with X-VC-API-Key rather than pasting the key into a URL
5. Keep to one request at a time on Free and Professional. A second concurrent job returns 429

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