# meteoblue Weather API vs Visual Crossing Weather API

> meteoblue Weather API scores 61.7 (C) on agent readiness against Visual Crossing Weather API's 59.9 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Visual Crossing Weather API leads on agent ergonomics and payments & pricing. Both do weather current. Category scores, facts, verdicts…

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/meteoblue-vs-visual-crossing
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/meteoblue-vs-visual-crossing.md (~2,700 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/meteoblue-vs-visual-crossing.min.md (~680 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/meteoblue-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: 2026-10-08

meteoblue Weather API scores 61.7 (C) on agent readiness against Visual Crossing Weather API's 59.9 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Visual Crossing Weather API leads on agent ergonomics and payments & pricing. Both do weather current.

- meteoblue Weather API: grade C, 61.7/100, rank #360 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/meteoblue.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/meteoblue.json
- Visual Crossing Weather API: grade C, 59.9/100, rank #417 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/visual-crossing.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/visual-crossing.json

## Which one, for what

### meteoblue Weather API (C)

Good for: Energy, agriculture and marine applications that need solar, wind, soil, sea or ensemble variables at a point, with history back to 1940 on a paid plan.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 75 against 66
- Security & auth, 51 against 40
- Transparency & trust, 61 against 56

Watch for: The key is accepted only as the `apikey` query parameter, so it appears in URLs and logs unless request signing is switched on

### Visual Crossing Weather API (C)

Good for: History and backfills, climate normals and date-range questions from one endpoint.

Ahead on:
- Agent ergonomics, 78 against 66
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 34

Also in its favour:
- Free to start without a card

Watch for: Key only in the query string on the REST API


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | meteoblue Weather API | Visual Crossing Weather API | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 75 | 66 | meteoblue Weather API +9 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 77 | 74 | meteoblue Weather API +3 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 66 | 78 | Visual Crossing Weather API +12 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 51 | 40 | meteoblue Weather API +11 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 34 | 40 | Visual Crossing Weather API +6 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 57 | 58 | Visual Crossing Weather API +1 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 61 | 56 | meteoblue Weather API +5 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **61.7 · C** | **59.9 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | meteoblue Weather API | Visual Crossing Weather API |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | meteoblue AG | Visual Crossing |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://my.meteoblue.com` | `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 | Proprietary service under meteoblue's general terms and conditions. The Python SDK for the Dataset API is MIT | none |
| Tools exposed | none | 1 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-08-22 | none |
| Terms last updated | 2018-05-24 | 2023-01-01 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2024-05-15 | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 8 stars, 512 PyPI/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | none | 4/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**meteoblue Weather API.** Eight of the APIs publish OpenAPI 3.1 specs, and the Forecast API spec lists the credit cost of every package. A public Pingdom page shows monthly uptime per API. The key travels only in the query string, the free trial covers nine forecast packages, and no security.txt, certification or DPA was found.

**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

### meteoblue Weather API

1. Pass `lat`, `lon` and `apikey` to `https://my.meteoblue.com/packages/<package>`. Join packages with commas, such as `basic-1h,basic-day`, to get several in one call
2. Budget credits before calling. One call costs 4,000 to 96,000 credits by package, and the free trial holds 10 million for a year. Read `MB-Credits-Accounted` on each response
3. Set `forecastDays` and pick the coarsest resolution that does the job. Without it the API returns every forecast day it has
4. Call with a 30-second timeout, wait 30 seconds after an error and stop after 10 retries, as the availability page advises. The default limit is 500 calls a minute
5. Keep the key out of logs, since it is part of every URL. Ask for a shared secret and send `expire` and `sig` if URLs may be seen by others

### 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

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, meteoblue Weather API or Visual Crossing Weather API?

meteoblue Weather API scores 61.7 (C) on agent readiness against Visual Crossing Weather API's 59.9 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Visual Crossing Weather API leads on agent ergonomics and payments & pricing.

### Do meteoblue Weather API and Visual Crossing Weather API need an API key?

Both need an API key.

### Can an agent call meteoblue Weather API and Visual Crossing Weather API without installing anything?

Yes. meteoblue Weather API has a hosted endpoint at https://my.meteoblue.com and Visual Crossing Weather API at https://weather.visualcrossing.com/VisualCrossingWebServices/rest/services/timeline.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/meteoblue-vs-visual-crossing.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/meteoblue-vs-visual-crossing.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "meteoblue", "b": "visual-crossing"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare meteoblue visual-crossing`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/meteoblue.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/visual-crossing.json

## Other comparisons with meteoblue Weather API or Visual Crossing Weather API

- [AccuWeather Core Weather API + MCP vs meteoblue Weather API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/accuweather-api-vs-meteoblue.md)
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- [meteoblue Weather API vs OpenWeather One Call API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/meteoblue-vs-openweather-one-call.md)
- [meteoblue Weather API vs Pirate Weather](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/meteoblue-vs-pirate-weather.md)
- [meteoblue Weather API vs Tomorrow.io Weather API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/meteoblue-vs-tomorrow-io.md)
- [meteoblue Weather API vs The Weather Company Data APIs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/meteoblue-vs-weather-company.md)
- [meteoblue Weather API vs WeatherAPI.com](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/meteoblue-vs-weatherapi-com.md)
- [meteoblue Weather API vs Weatherbit API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/meteoblue-vs-weatherbit.md)
- [meteoblue Weather API vs Xweather Weather API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/meteoblue-vs-xweather.md)
- [Meteomatics Weather API vs Visual Crossing Weather API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/meteomatics-vs-visual-crossing.md)
- [NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) vs Visual Crossing Weather API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nws-api-vs-visual-crossing.md)
- [OpenWeather One Call API vs Visual Crossing Weather API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/openweather-one-call-vs-visual-crossing.md)
- [Pirate Weather vs Visual Crossing Weather API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pirate-weather-vs-visual-crossing.md)
- [Tomorrow.io Weather API vs Visual Crossing Weather API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/tomorrow-io-vs-visual-crossing.md)
- [Visual Crossing Weather API vs The Weather Company Data APIs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/visual-crossing-vs-weather-company.md)
- [Visual Crossing Weather API vs WeatherAPI.com](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/visual-crossing-vs-weatherapi-com.md)
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- [Visual Crossing Weather API vs Xweather Weather API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/visual-crossing-vs-xweather.md)