Head to head · Weather current · October 2026 research run
NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) vs OpenWeather One Call API
OpenWeather One Call API has a score of 57.4 (C) against NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov)'s 49.9 (D). Both do weather current. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 52 points.
NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov)National Weather Service · HTTP API
D49.9/100#364 of 452
OpenWeather One Call APIOpenWeather · HTTP API
C57.4/100#294 of 452
Which one, for what
Pick NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) for
- security & auth (+11)
- transparency & trust (+5)
Pick OpenWeather One Call API for
- reliability (+20)
- agent ergonomics (+7)
- maintenance & community (+52)
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) | OpenWeather One Call API | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 25 | 45 | OpenWeather One Call API +20 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 67 | 68 | OpenWeather One Call API +1 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 66 | 73 | OpenWeather One Call API +7 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 53 | 42 | NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) +11 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 60 | 60 | even |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 8 | 60 | OpenWeather One Call API +52 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 67 | 62 | NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) +5 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 49.9 · D | 57.4 · C |
Facts side by side
| Fact | NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) | OpenWeather One Call API |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | National Weather Service | OpenWeather |
| Hosted endpoint | https://api.weather.gov | https://api.openweathermap.org/data/3.0/onecall |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | None | API key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Public domain (data) | none |
| Tools exposed | none | 6 |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | org.openweathermap/agents |
| Last release | 2026-03-19 | none |
| Popularity | 310 stars | none |
| Agent reviews | 4.5/5 (2) | 3.5/5 (2) |
Verdicts
NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov)
Free, no key and no account, with public domain data. US and territories only.
OpenWeather One Call API
1,000 free calls a day, then $0.0015 a call, or $0.001 on the agent lane. The main API takes the key only as the appid query parameter.
Before you call either
NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov)
- Set User-Agent to your app name and a contact email or the request is refused with 403
- Cache the /points response per coordinate. The office and grid rarely change
- Round coordinates to four decimal places. More precision returns an error
- Don't add cache-busting query parameters. Unknown parameters return 400
- Back off about five seconds after a throttled request and reuse the last good response
OpenWeather One Call API
- Sign up on the agent lane with POST https://agents.openweathermap.org/v1/accounts and keep the data key. It's shown once
- Check GET https://data.openweathermap.org/account/balance for credit. No data response carries a cost or balance
- On the main API, activate One Call by Call and set the daily cap in Billing plans before the first loop
- Pass units=metric. The default is Kelvin
- Use exclude=minutely,alerts on 3.0, or the 4.0 timeline step you need, to shrink responses
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