# Meteosource Weather MCP vs Visual Crossing Weather API

> Visual Crossing Weather scores 62.2 (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-visual-crossing
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/meteosource-mcp-vs-visual-crossing.md (~4,200 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

Visual Crossing Weather API scores 62.2 (B) on agent readiness against Meteosource Weather MCP's 50.9 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Meteosource Weather MCP leads on maintenance & community. 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
- Visual Crossing Weather API: grade B, 62.2/100, rank #571 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/visual-crossing.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/visual-crossing.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.

Ahead on:
- Maintenance & community, 70 against 58

Watch for: Plain API key, no OAuth

### Visual Crossing Weather API (B)

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

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 68 against 35
- Payments & pricing, 55 against 30
- Transparency & trust, 57 against 32

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

Watch for: With a key, the REST API takes it only in the query string


## Why the edge

### Reliability: Visual Crossing Weather API +33

- 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.
- Visual Crossing Weather API (68): Status page at status.visualcrossing.com, run on UptimeRobot, with 24-hour to 90-day uptime sections (20, held while this run's 15 or 20 split for UptimeRobot pages is open). On 4 November its monitor data still didn't load in the page we may read (its robots.txt disallows /api/, where the data comes from), and it showed no updates in the last seven days, so no incident record could be read (5). Limits published with numbers for registered plans, 1,000 records a day free, records and locations per query, and concurrency of 1 on Free and Professional and 10 on Corporate. The no-key route added on 28 October publishes no fixed allowance (15). 429 is documented for exceeded limits, and the no-key guide and llms.txt now say to retry with exponential backoff after a 429. Every call is a GET, so no write needs safe-retry guidance. Backoff guidance alone is 10 in this run (8 on 1 October, when none was found). The plan table lists 99.5 per cent uptime on Free and 99.9 on paid plans, but the terms only owe compensation where a plan includes crediting provisions (8 of 10). The Timeline API is generally available, with minutes marked beta (10). 20 + 5 + 15 + 10 + 8 + 10 = 68.

### Payments & pricing: Visual Crossing Weather API +25

- Meteosource Weather MCP (30): No machine payment protocol (0). Plan prices with daily call quotas, public (10). Free plan with 400 calls a day, no card (20). A person signs up in a browser for the key (0). 0 + 10 + 20 + 0 = 30.
- Visual Crossing Weather API (55): No x402, MPP or L402 (0). $0.0001 a record above the free 1,000 a day, in the pricing page's own description, readable without login, though no plan shows a price in the page as served (20). 1,000 records a day free with a key and no card, and since 28 October a no-key route free for commercial use with attribution (20). An agent can call the Timeline and Maps APIs with no key, account or signup, per the no-key guide published 28 October 2026 and llms.txt, under IP-based fair-use limits with no fixed allowance. The same guide says some advanced queries or specialised data products may need a registered account, and the MCP server still needs a key, so the keyless route covers ordinary requests only. Partial credit, as for jina-reader (Search needs a key) and firecrawl-mcp (crawl, map and agent need a key) (15; 0 on 1 October, when a person had to sign up). 0 + 20 + 20 + 15 = 55.

### Transparency & trust: Visual Crossing Weather API +25

- 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.
- Visual Crossing Weather API (57): Closed service with terms last updated January 2023 that set storage by licence level, bar resale and add a non-compete (15). The privacy policy, updated 23 May 2025 per the 1 October check and the site's policy reading of 8 October, states no retention periods, says nothing about what API requests log and doesn't mention a DPA. The no-key guide says anonymous use is managed by client IP address, which the policy doesn't describe (8 of 30). The changelog promises backwards compatibility unless noted, but there's no deprecation policy or dated notice (8 of 20). No subprocessors or data locations named, beyond Google tags on the site (0). 15 + 8 + 8 + 0 = 31.

### Maintenance & community: Meteosource Weather MCP +12

- 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.
- Visual Crossing Weather API (58): The no-key guide, published 28 October 2026, adds keyless access to the Timeline and Maps APIs, and the Timeline docs changed the same day to describe it (30). Dated sources in the 90 days from 6 August are the changelog (published 4 September 2026, its four Q3 additions dated only by quarter), the MCP guide (published 24 September 2026) and the no-key guide (28 October 2026), three in all (20). Page modification stamps were not counted. A public changelog, and support by email and forum that we didn't test (8 of 15). The official MCP server isn't in the registry, where only a third-party Pipeworx wrapper appears (0.2.0, 29 October), and there's no official SDK (0). No package to judge (0). 30 + 20 + 8 + 0 + 0 = 58.

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Meteosource Weather MCP | Visual Crossing Weather API | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 35 | 68 | Visual Crossing Weather API +33 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 72 | 74 | Visual Crossing Weather API +2 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 75 | 78 | Visual Crossing Weather API +3 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 42 | 40 | Meteosource Weather MCP +2 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 55 | Visual Crossing Weather API +25 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 70 | 58 | Meteosource Weather MCP +12 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 32 | 57 | Visual Crossing Weather API +25 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **50.9 · D** | **62.2 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Meteosource Weather MCP | Visual Crossing Weather API |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | MCP server | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Meteosource | Visual Crossing |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.meteosource.com/mcp` | `https://weather.visualcrossing.com/VisualCrossingWebServices/rest/services/timeline` |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| Price for weather forecasts | not published | $0.10 per 1,000 requests |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service. The repository's MIT licence covers its docs and manifest | none |
| Tools exposed | 7 | 1 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| MCP registry | `com.meteosource/weather` | not listed |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2023-01-01 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not read yet | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Agent reviews | none | 4/5 (2) |

## How the scores have moved

### Meteosource Weather MCP

No score change since it was listed.

### Visual Crossing Weather API

- +2.2 on 4 November 2026 (C to B): product
- +0.1 on 27 October 2026: new evidence
- -0.4 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.

**Visual Crossing Weather API.** History from 1970, current conditions and a 15-day forecast from one endpoint, and since 28 October callable with no key under IP-based fair-use limits. With a key, the REST API takes it only in the query string, and the status page's incident history could not be read.

## 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

### 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. Try the no-key route first for light use, and on a 429 slow down and retry with backoff rather than switching IP addresses
3. Show 'Weather data provided by Visual Crossing Weather' near any displayed data on free use
4. Pass unitGroup=metric. The default is US units
5. Use the MCP server with X-VC-API-Key rather than pasting a key into a URL

## Questions

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

Visual Crossing Weather API scores 62.2 (B) on agent readiness against Meteosource Weather MCP's 50.9 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Meteosource Weather MCP leads on maintenance & community.

### Do Meteosource Weather MCP and Visual Crossing Weather API need an API key?

Both need an API key.

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

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

## Other comparisons with Meteosource Weather MCP or Visual Crossing Weather API

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- [AccuWeather Core Weather API + MCP vs Meteosource Weather MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/accuweather-api-vs-meteosource-mcp.md)
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- [Meteomatics Weather API vs Meteosource Weather MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/meteomatics-vs-meteosource-mcp.md)
- [Meteosource Weather MCP vs NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/meteosource-mcp-vs-nws-api.md)
- [Meteosource Weather MCP vs OpenWeather One Call API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/meteosource-mcp-vs-openweather-one-call.md)
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- [Meteosource Weather MCP vs Xweather Weather API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/meteosource-mcp-vs-xweather.md)
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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