# 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. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nws-api-vs-weatherapi-com
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- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nws-api-vs-weatherapi-com.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-05

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): grade D, 49.9/100, rank #364 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/nws-api.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/nws-api.json
- WeatherAPI.com: grade B, 65.8/100, rank #169 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/weatherapi-com.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/weatherapi-com.json

## 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

| Category | Weight | NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) | WeatherAPI.com | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 25 | 90 | WeatherAPI.com +65 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 67 | 89 | WeatherAPI.com +22 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 66 | 80 | WeatherAPI.com +14 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 53 | 37 | NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) +16 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 30 | NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) +30 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 8 | 45 | WeatherAPI.com +37 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 67 | 70 | WeatherAPI.com +3 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **49.9 · D** | **65.8 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) | WeatherAPI.com |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | National Weather Service | WeatherAPI.com (Zoomash Ltd) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.weather.gov` | `https://api.weatherapi.com/v1` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | None | API key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Public domain (data) | none |
| Tools exposed | none | none |
| 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 | not listed |
| 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.

**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

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