# Meteomatics Weather API vs Visual Crossing Weather API

> Visual Crossing Weather API scores 59.9 (C) on agent readiness against Meteomatics Weather API's 49.6 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Meteomatics Weather API leads on security & auth. Both do weather current. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by…

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- 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

Visual Crossing Weather API scores 59.9 (C) on agent readiness against Meteomatics Weather API's 49.6 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Meteomatics Weather API leads on security & auth. Both do weather current.

- Meteomatics Weather API: grade D, 49.6/100, rank #606 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/meteomatics.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/meteomatics.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

### Meteomatics Weather API (D)

Good for: Companies in energy, aviation, insurance and logistics that need many models, long history, polygon and route queries and an SLA, and will buy by contract.

Ahead on:
- Security & auth, 54 against 40

Watch for: No public price, free tier or self-serve signup found. Credentials arrive by email after a sales conversation

### Visual Crossing Weather API (C)

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

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 66 against 34
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 0
- Maintenance & community, 58 against 42

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 | Meteomatics Weather API | Visual Crossing Weather API | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 34 | 66 | Visual Crossing Weather API +32 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 71 | 74 | Visual Crossing Weather API +3 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 78 | Meteomatics Weather API +2 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 54 | 40 | Meteomatics Weather API +14 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 0 | 40 | Visual Crossing Weather API +40 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 42 | 58 | Visual Crossing Weather API +16 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 59 | 56 | Meteomatics Weather API +3 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **49.6 · D** | **59.9 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Meteomatics Weather API | Visual Crossing Weather API |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Meteomatics AG | Visual Crossing |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.meteomatics.com` | `https://weather.visualcrossing.com/VisualCrossingWebServices/rest/services/timeline` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Paid | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Meteomatics' general terms and conditions. The Python connector on GitHub is MIT | none |
| Tools exposed | 9 | 1 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-08-24 | none |
| Terms last updated | no date given | 2023-01-01 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 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 | 56 stars, 16k PyPI/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | none | 4/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Meteomatics Weather API.** A public OpenAPI file, a hosted MCP server whose nine tools are all marked read-only, a published SLA with compensation and ISO 27001 certification suit company use. Access needs a sales contract, with no public price, free tier or self-serve signup found, no status page, and REST calls that authenticate with a username and password.

**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

### Meteomatics Weather API

1. Ask the account owner for credentials first. There is no signup, and both the REST API and the MCP server need a Meteomatics account with API access
2. Build REST URLs as validdatetime/parameters/location/format, for example `2026-10-08T00:00:00Z/t_2m:C/52.52,13.40/json`. Parameter names carry their unit after a colon
3. Keep each query to 10 locations and 10 parameters unless the contract says otherwise, and use POST when a GET URL passes 2,000 characters
4. Send credentials or the token in the `Authorization` header. Avoid the documented `access_token` query parameter, which puts the token in URLs and logs
5. Read `/user_stats_json` before a large job. It reports queries sent and the contract's limits, and 429 means a limit is spent
6. Treat reserved values such as -888 and -999 as invalid or missing data, and shrink the request when a 408 arrives after the 300-second timeout

### 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, Meteomatics Weather API or Visual Crossing Weather API?

Visual Crossing Weather API scores 59.9 (C) on agent readiness against Meteomatics Weather API's 49.6 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Meteomatics Weather API leads on security & auth.

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

Meteomatics Weather API takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Visual Crossing Weather API needs an API key.

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

Yes. Meteomatics Weather API has a hosted endpoint at https://api.meteomatics.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/meteomatics-vs-visual-crossing.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/meteomatics-vs-visual-crossing.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "meteomatics", "b": "visual-crossing"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare meteomatics visual-crossing`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/meteomatics.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/visual-crossing.json

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