# Meteosource Weather MCP vs Pirate Weather

> Pirate Weather scores 65.7 (B) to Meteosource Weather MCP's 50.9 (D) for weather forecasts. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/meteosource-mcp-vs-pirate-weather
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/meteosource-mcp-vs-pirate-weather.md (~3,950 tokens)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- DNS: dig +short TXT <slug>.grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.<category>. and <a>.vs.<b>. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-07

Pirate Weather scores 65.7 (B) on agent readiness against Meteosource Weather MCP's 50.9 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do weather forecasts.

- Meteosource Weather MCP: grade D, 50.9/100, rank #1048 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/meteosource-mcp.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/meteosource-mcp.json
- Pirate Weather: grade B, 65.7/100, rank #408 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/pirate-weather.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/pirate-weather.json
- Best weather and climate data APIs for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/weather/index.md
- All 136 weather comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/weather/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Meteosource Weather MCP (D)

Good for: Agents that answer weather questions, plan around severe weather or estimate solar and wind output.

Watch for: Plain API key, no OAuth

### Pirate Weather (B)

Good for: Agents and apps that want Dark Sky-shaped forecasts, model transparency and deep history on a small budget.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 75 against 35
- Schema & documentation, 85 against 72
- Maintenance & community, 80 against 70
- Transparency & trust, 66 against 32

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

Watch for: No SLA, and the terms call it best effort


## Why the edge

### Reliability: Pirate Weather +40

- Meteosource Weather MCP (35): status.meteosource.com wasn't reachable (0). No history (5). Daily call quotas per plan, and the README's plans-and-limits section (15). Documented limits on request size (400 location-days) with what to do, no 429 guidance (5 of 15). No SLA found (0). Version 0.1.2, not labelled beta (10). 0 + 5 + 15 + 5 + 0 + 10 = 35.
- Pirate Weather (75): Status page at pirateweather.xitoring.io, linked from the home page and the changelog. It rendered only with JavaScript on 1 October and answered our reader with a Cloudflare bot check on 1 November, so the award rests on the 30 September check that it exists (20). The project's own incident reports page, now at docs.pirateweather.net, is readable. In the last 90 days it records one incident, on 27 August 2026, when a cleanup job at the Apiable portal removed about 140 subscriptions and revoked their keys while the API itself stayed up, a partial incident (20). Limits published with numbers, 10,000 calls a month free and 20,000 on the $2 plan, with Ratelimit-Limit, Ratelimit-Remaining and Ratelimit-Reset headers (15). 429 means the monthly quota is spent and the reset header says when it clears, and the docs say to retry a 500. No backoff guidance beyond that, though every call is a GET (10 of 15). The terms say best effort with no warranty, so no SLA (0). Version 2 of the API is the stable default (10).

### Transparency & trust: Pirate Weather +34

- Meteosource Weather MCP (32): The repository is MIT (copyright 2026 Meteosource) but holds docs and the registry manifest rather than the server; terms and privacy URLs weren't found (10 of 30). The MCP page says keys aren't stored in full and caches are per key (10 of 30). No deprecation policy (0). Subprocessors not found (5 of 20). 10 + 10 + 0 + 5 = 25.
- Pirate Weather (66): The API code is AGPL-3.0 and the docs and OpenAPI spec are Apache-2.0. We took 5 off the 30 because the terms say nothing about reusing response data (25 of 30). The privacy notice is a generator template last updated 23 September 2024, with retention 'as long as necessary' and no DPA. It agrees with itself but says little (12 of 30). Version 1 and 2 response shapes are both kept, and the changelog dates every change, but there's no written deprecation policy (10 of 20). The privacy notice names Apiable and Stripe, and the infrastructure blog posts name AWS ECS, Aurora PostgreSQL and Kong, but no data locations are stated (8 of 20).

### Schema & documentation: Pirate Weather +13

- Meteosource Weather MCP (72): Seven tools read from tools/list with JSON Schema inputs (25). No llms.txt found; the README is Markdown on GitHub (5 of 10). Descriptions say what each returns and which plan it needs (15 of 20). Typed inputs, no enums (10 of 15). A README table of error messages and fixes (10 of 15). Tagged releases v0.1.0 to v0.1.2, no changelog file (7 of 15). 25 + 5 + 15 + 10 + 10 + 7 = 72.
- Pirate Weather (85): OpenAPI 3.1.0 spec in the docs repository, versioned 2.10.3 to match the API since 20 October 2026, with 18 parameters and 400, 401, 404, 429, 500 and 502 responses on the forecast path (25). No llms.txt (404 on docs.pirateweather.net), though the Markdown sources of the docs are public on GitHub (5 of 10). The API docs and data-sources page explain each block and which model fills each field. The 11 MCP tool docstrings are one line each, with no when-not-to-use (14 of 20). The spec has five enums and leaves `exclude` and `include` as comma strings. The MCP tools use Pydantic types with bounded latitude, longitude and day counts and enumerated units and languages (11 of 15). A full response example page, 292 example values in the spec and every error code explained (15). Semantic API versions and a dated changelog with a pull request behind every line (15).

### Maintenance & community: Pirate Weather +10

- Meteosource Weather MCP (70): Repository commit and tag v0.1.2 on 26 October 2026 (30). Three tags in 90 days (20). Repository issues not read (0). Official registry entry com.meteosource/weather (15). Small repository with server.json; server source not public (5 of 10). 30 + 20 + 0 + 15 + 5 = 70. Registry presence read from Anchor Terminal's own daily import of the official MCP registry (/api/v1/registry.json, 6 November 2026), not the registry's API.
- Pirate Weather (80): Version 2.10.3 on 21 October 2026 (30). Four releases in the last 90 days, 2.10.0, 2.10.1 and 2.10.2 between 18 and 23 September and 2.10.3 on 21 October (20). Open issues per the 1 October check, not re-read on 1 November because GitHub's pages refuse our reader. 32 were open then, labelled and triaged, most of them requests for new capabilities or data sources, with two portal bugs marked 'awaiting developer response' since May and a new-account key error (#656) open since 7 July (20 of 25). The hosted MCP server isn't in the official registry, where only a third-party Pipeworx wrapper (0.2.0) appears, and there's no official SDK (0). Dependabot, CodeQL and test workflows on the code repository, with dependency bumps merged on 26 October and 1 November 2026 (10).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Meteosource Weather MCP | Pirate Weather | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 35 | 75 | Pirate Weather +40 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 72 | 85 | Pirate Weather +13 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 75 | 77 | Pirate Weather +2 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 42 | 45 | Pirate Weather +3 |
| 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) | 70 | 80 | Pirate Weather +10 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 32 | 66 | Pirate Weather +34 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **50.9 · D** | **65.7 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Meteosource Weather MCP | Pirate Weather |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | MCP server | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Meteosource | Pirate Weather |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.meteosource.com/mcp` | `https://api.pirateweather.net/forecast` |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service. The repository's MIT licence covers its docs and manifest | Apache-2.0 (docs and spec), AGPL-3.0 (API code) |
| Tools exposed | 7 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| MCP registry | `com.meteosource/weather` | not listed |
| Last release | none | 2026-10-21 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | not read yet |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | not read yet |
| Popularity | none | 907 stars |
| Agent reviews | none | 4/5 (2) |

## How the scores have moved

### Meteosource Weather MCP

No score change since it was listed.

### Pirate Weather

- -0.3 on 1 November 2026: correction
- +0.1 on 27 October 2026: new evidence
- -0.3 on 8 October 2026: checklist

## Verdicts

**Meteosource Weather MCP.** Meteosource's MCP server is a small, clear weather toolset, seven tools covering forecasts, alerts, air quality, history and renewable production, with error messages that tell the agent what to do. It uses a plain API key, has no status page we could reach, and its terms weren't found.

**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

### Meteosource Weather MCP

1. Call search_places first to resolve a location
2. Split history requests over 400 location-days into shorter ranges
3. Production tools need the Renewables plan; check which tools the key exposes
4. Send the key in a header, never in a URL

### 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

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Meteosource Weather MCP or Pirate Weather?

Pirate Weather scores 65.7 (B) on agent readiness against Meteosource Weather MCP's 50.9 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.

### Do Meteosource Weather MCP and Pirate Weather need an API key?

Both need an API key.

### Can an agent call Meteosource Weather MCP and Pirate Weather without installing anything?

Yes. Meteosource Weather MCP has a hosted endpoint at https://mcp.meteosource.com/mcp and Pirate Weather at https://api.pirateweather.net/forecast.

### Are Meteosource Weather MCP and Pirate Weather open source?

No open-source release is listed for Meteosource Weather MCP. Pirate Weather is open source (Apache-2.0 (docs and spec), AGPL-3.0 (API code)).


## For agents

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

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Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp
