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Head to head · Weather current · October 2026 research run

NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) vs The Weather Company Data APIs

The Weather Company Data APIs scores 52.6 (D) on agent readiness against NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov)'s 49.6 (D), and leads in 2 of 7 scored categories. NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) leads on agent ergonomics, security & auth, payments & pricing and transparency & trust. Both do weather current.

NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov)National Weather Service · HTTP API D49.6/100#605 of 722 The Weather Company Data APIsThe Weather Company, LLC · HTTP API D52.6/100#565 of 722

Which one, for what

NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) D

Good for The authoritative US forecast and alert feed, best for alerting and US-only agents that can tolerate a government service's availability.

Ahead on

  • Agent ergonomics, 66 against 54
  • Security & auth, 53 against 48
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 20
  • Transparency & trust, 63 against 49

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it

Watch for

US and territories only

The Weather Company Data APIs D

Good for A business that wants one contract for global forecasts, 4 km current conditions, alerts, imagery, aviation and deep history, and that can go through sales.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 73 against 25
  • Maintenance & community, 36 against 8

Watch for

No self-serve signup. The trial is requested through a form, is limited to enterprise customers, and the Buy now button opens a contact form.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runNOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov)The Weather Company Data APIsEdge
Reliability16%202573The Weather Company Data APIs +48
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26767even
Agent ergonomics13%16.26654NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) +12
Security & auth14%17.55348NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) +5
Payments & pricing10%12.56020NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) +40
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8836The Weather Company Data APIs +28
Transparency & trust7%8.86349NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) +14
Negative events≤1500
Total49.6 · D52.6 · D

Facts side by side

FactNOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov)The Weather Company Data APIs
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorNational Weather ServiceThe Weather Company, LLC
Hosted endpointhttps://api.weather.govhttps://api.weather.com
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthNoneAPI key
PricingFreePaid
x402nono
LicencePublic domain (data)Proprietary service. Use is under a content licensing agreement with The Weather Company, which is not published
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-03-192026-09-14
Terms last updatedno date givenno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno date givencouldn't be read
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the text
Popularity310 starsnone
Agent reviews4.5/5 (2)none

Verdicts

NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov)

Free, no key and no account, with public domain data. US and territories only.

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.

Before you call either

NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov)

  1. Set User-Agent to your app name and a contact email or the request is refused with 403
  2. Cache the /points response per coordinate. The office and grid rarely change
  3. Round coordinates to four decimal places. More precision returns an error
  4. Don't add cache-busting query parameters. Unknown parameters return 400
  5. Back off about five seconds after a throttled request and reuse the last good response

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.

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) or The Weather Company Data APIs?

The Weather Company Data APIs scores 52.6 (D) on agent readiness against NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov)'s 49.6 (D), and leads in 2 of 7 scored categories. NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) leads on agent ergonomics, security & auth, payments & pricing and transparency & trust.

Do NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) and The Weather Company Data APIs need an API key?

NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) needs no key. The Weather Company Data APIs needs an API key.

Can an agent call NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) and The Weather Company Data APIs without installing anything?

Yes. NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) has a hosted endpoint at https://api.weather.gov and The Weather Company Data APIs at https://api.weather.com.

Other comparisons with NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) or The Weather Company Data APIs

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