Meteomatics Weather API vs The Weather Company Data APIs

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.

The Weather Company Data APIs

A wide weather data API with 168 API references built from OpenAPI documents, global 4 km current conditions, hourly history from June 2015 and a status page with component history. Keys come only through a sales-reviewed trial or contract, travel only in the URL, and the terms that govern the API are not published.

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

The Weather Company Data APIs

1. Send units, language and format=json with a location on every v3 call, plus Accept-Encoding: gzip, which the usage guide marks as required.
2. Keep the key out of logs and client-side code, because it travels in the query string as apiKey.
3. Treat a 401 as either a bad key, an endpoint outside the key's package or an exceeded limit, and treat a 204 as no data for the query.
4. Each forecast duration (3day to 15day) is a separate entitlement. Request only durations the contract covers.
5. Use /v3/aggcommon to combine up to 10 products in one request. Each product and each location still counts as one call.