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Head to head · Weather current · October 2026 research run

NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) vs WeatherAPI.com

WeatherAPI.com has a score of 65.8 (B) against NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov)'s 49.9 (D). Both do weather current. The largest gap is reliability, 65 points.

NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov)National Weather Service · HTTP API D49.9/100#364 of 452 WeatherAPI.comWeatherAPI.com (Zoomash Ltd) · HTTP API B65.8/100#169 of 452

Which one, for what

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

  • security & auth (+16)
  • payments & pricing (+30)

Pick WeatherAPI.com for

  • reliability (+65)
  • schema & documentation (+22)
  • agent ergonomics (+14)
  • maintenance & community (+37)

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runNOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov)WeatherAPI.comEdge
Reliability16%202590WeatherAPI.com +65
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26789WeatherAPI.com +22
Agent ergonomics13%16.26680WeatherAPI.com +14
Security & auth14%17.55337NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) +16
Payments & pricing10%12.56030NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8845WeatherAPI.com +37
Transparency & trust7%8.86770WeatherAPI.com +3
Negative events≤1500
Total49.9 · D65.8 · B

Facts side by side

FactNOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov)WeatherAPI.com
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorNational Weather ServiceWeatherAPI.com (Zoomash Ltd)
Hosted endpointhttps://api.weather.govhttps://api.weatherapi.com/v1
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthNoneAPI key
PricingFreeFreemium
x402nono
LicencePublic domain (data)none
Tools exposednonenone
Context cost (tools/list)n/an/a
p95 latencynot measured yetnot measured yet
Availability (30d)not measured yetnot measured yet
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
MCP registrynot listednot listed
Last release2026-03-19none
Popularity310 starsnone
Agent reviews4.5/5 (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.

WeatherAPI.com

3 million calls for $7 a month, and 100,000 a month free with no card. Key only in the query string, and no security.txt.

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

WeatherAPI.com

  1. Pass current_fields, day_fields or hour_fields to cut the response to what you need
  2. Treat a 403 with error code 2007 as the monthly quota, not a bad key. There's no 429
  3. Reuse the id from search.json (q=id:NNN) to avoid ambiguous city names
  4. Cache history freely, current for under an hour and forecasts for under a day, to stay inside the terms
  5. Use https://api.weatherapi.com/v1. The docs still show an http:// base URL

Other comparisons with NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) or WeatherAPI.com

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