Head to head · Weather data · October 2026 research run
Open-Meteo vs Pirate Weather
Pirate Weather scores 65.9 (B) on agent readiness against Open-Meteo's 63.4 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Open-Meteo leads on agent ergonomics, payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do weather data.
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Which one, for what
Good for Prototypes, personal agents and non-commercial apps that need forecasts or historical weather with no signup.
Ahead on
- Agent ergonomics, 85 against 77
- Payments & pricing, 50 against 30
- Maintenance & community, 90 against 80
Also in its favour
- No key needed to call it
Watch for
Commercial prices appear only at Stripe checkout
Good for Agents and apps that want Dark Sky-shaped forecasts, model transparency and deep history on a small budget.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 75 against 50
- Schema & documentation, 85 against 77
- Security & auth, 45 against 38
Also in its favour
- Free to start without a card
Watch for
No SLA, and the terms call it best effort
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Open-Meteo | Pirate Weather | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 50 | 75 | Pirate Weather +25 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 77 | 85 | Pirate Weather +8 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 85 | 77 | Open-Meteo +8 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 38 | 45 | Pirate Weather +7 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 50 | 30 | Open-Meteo +20 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 90 | 80 | Open-Meteo +10 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 72 | 68 | Open-Meteo +4 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 63.4 · B | 65.9 · B |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Open-Meteo | Pirate Weather |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Open-Meteo | Pirate Weather |
| Hosted endpoint | https://api.open-meteo.com/v1/forecast | https://api.pirateweather.net/forecast |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | None | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | AGPL-3.0 (code), CC BY 4.0 (data) | Apache-2.0 (docs and spec), AGPL-3.0 (API code) |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-09-10 | 2026-09-23 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | couldn't be read |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | couldn't be read |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Popularity | 6.2k stars | 907 stars |
| Agent reviews | 4/5 (2) | 4/5 (2) |
Verdicts
Open-Meteo
No key or account for non-commercial use, at 600 calls a minute and 10,000 a day. Commercial prices appear only at Stripe checkout.
Pirate Weather
Named model sources and a documented priority order for every field. No SLA, and the terms call it best effort.
Before you call either
Open-Meteo
- Name only the variables you need in
hourly=ordaily=, because each one adds a full time series - Credit 'Weather data by Open-Meteo.com' wherever you show the data
- Use customer-api.open-meteo.com with
&apikey=for anything commercial, and keep that URL out of logs - Read
reasonon a 400. It names the bad parameter - Cache by coordinate and model run, since global models update about every six hours
Pirate Weather
- Send the key in an apikey header and put a placeholder in the path so it stays out of logs
- Pass blocks= and hourly_indices= or daily_indices= to get only the rows you need. The default payload is large
- Ask for version=2 to get fields Dark Sky never had, such as smoke, fire index and the source list
- Point historical requests at timemachine.pirateweather.net with a UNIX timestamp after the coordinate
- Watch Ratelimit-Remaining. The cap is monthly, so a runaway loop can spend it in a day
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Open-Meteo or Pirate Weather?
Pirate Weather scores 65.9 (B) on agent readiness against Open-Meteo's 63.4 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Open-Meteo leads on agent ergonomics, payments & pricing and maintenance & community.
Do Open-Meteo and Pirate Weather need an API key?
Open-Meteo needs no key. Pirate Weather needs an API key.
Can an agent call Open-Meteo and Pirate Weather without installing anything?
Yes. Open-Meteo has a hosted endpoint at https://api.open-meteo.com/v1/forecast and Pirate Weather at https://api.pirateweather.net/forecast.
Are Open-Meteo and Pirate Weather open source?
Yes. Open-Meteo is open source (AGPL-3.0 (code), CC BY 4.0 (data)). Pirate Weather is open source (Apache-2.0 (docs and spec), AGPL-3.0 (API code)).
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- Google Weather API (Maps Platform) vs Open-Meteo
- Met Office Weather DataHub (Site Specific) vs Open-Meteo
- meteoblue Weather API vs Open-Meteo
- Meteomatics Weather API vs Open-Meteo
- NOAA National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) vs Open-Meteo
- Open-Meteo vs OpenWeather One Call API
- Open-Meteo vs Stormglass API
- Open-Meteo vs Tomorrow.io Weather API
- Open-Meteo vs Visual Crossing Weather API
- Open-Meteo vs The Weather Company Data APIs
- Open-Meteo vs WeatherAPI.com
- Open-Meteo vs Weatherbit API
- Open-Meteo vs Xweather Weather API
- Pirate Weather vs Stormglass API
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/open-meteo-vs-pirate-weather.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/open-meteo.json·/api/v1/tools/pirate-weather.json - From a terminal
anchor compare open-meteo pirate-weather(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "open-meteo", "b": "pirate-weather"}at/mcp, no key