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Head to head · Weather data · October 2026 research run

Open-Meteo vs Visual Crossing Weather API

Open-Meteo scores 63.4 (B) on agent readiness against Visual Crossing Weather API's 59.9 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Visual Crossing Weather API leads on reliability. Both do weather data.

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Open-MeteoOpen-Meteo · HTTP API B63.4/100#394 of 950 Visual Crossing Weather APIVisual Crossing · HTTP API C59.9/100#534 of 950

Which one, for what

Open-Meteo B

Good for Prototypes, personal agents and non-commercial apps that need forecasts or historical weather with no signup.

Ahead on

  • Agent ergonomics, 85 against 78
  • Payments & pricing, 50 against 40
  • Maintenance & community, 90 against 58
  • Transparency & trust, 72 against 56

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Open source

Watch for

Commercial prices appear only at Stripe checkout

Visual Crossing Weather API C

Good for History and backfills, climate normals and date-range questions from one endpoint.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 66 against 50

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

Key only in the query string on the REST API

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runOpen-MeteoVisual Crossing Weather APIEdge
Reliability16%205066Visual Crossing Weather API +16
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27774Open-Meteo +3
Agent ergonomics13%16.28578Open-Meteo +7
Security & auth14%17.53840Visual Crossing Weather API +2
Payments & pricing10%12.55040Open-Meteo +10
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.89058Open-Meteo +32
Transparency & trust7%8.87256Open-Meteo +16
Negative events≤1500
Total63.4 · B59.9 · C

Facts side by side

FactOpen-MeteoVisual Crossing Weather API
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorOpen-MeteoVisual Crossing
Hosted endpointhttps://api.open-meteo.com/v1/forecasthttps://weather.visualcrossing.com/VisualCrossingWebServices/rest/services/timeline
TransportsHTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthNoneAPI key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nono
LicenceAGPL-3.0 (code), CC BY 4.0 (data)none
Tools exposednone1
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-09-10none
Terms last updatedno date given2023-01-01
Privacy policy last updatedno date givenno date given
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textnot found in the text
Popularity6.2k starsnone
Agent reviews4/5 (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.

Visual Crossing Weather API

History from 1970, current conditions and a 15-day forecast from one endpoint. Key only in the query string on the REST API.

Before you call either

Open-Meteo

  1. Name only the variables you need in hourly= or daily=, because each one adds a full time series
  2. Credit 'Weather data by Open-Meteo.com' wherever you show the data
  3. Use customer-api.open-meteo.com with &apikey= for anything commercial, and keep that URL out of logs
  4. Read reason on a 400. It names the bad parameter
  5. Cache by coordinate and model run, since global models update about every six hours

Visual Crossing Weather API

  1. Always pass include= and elements=. A bare call returns days, hours and current for every element and burns records
  2. Count records before a backfill. Hourly data is 24 records a day, so a year for one place is 8,760
  3. Pass unitGroup=metric. The default is US units
  4. Use the MCP server with X-VC-API-Key rather than pasting the key into a URL
  5. Keep to one request at a time on Free and Professional. A second concurrent job returns 429

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Open-Meteo or Visual Crossing Weather API?

Open-Meteo scores 63.4 (B) on agent readiness against Visual Crossing Weather API's 59.9 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Visual Crossing Weather API leads on reliability.

Do Open-Meteo and Visual Crossing Weather API need an API key?

Open-Meteo needs no key. Visual Crossing Weather API needs an API key.

Can an agent call Open-Meteo and Visual Crossing Weather API without installing anything?

Yes. Open-Meteo has a hosted endpoint at https://api.open-meteo.com/v1/forecast and Visual Crossing Weather API at https://weather.visualcrossing.com/VisualCrossingWebServices/rest/services/timeline.

Are Open-Meteo and Visual Crossing Weather API open source?

Open-Meteo is open source (AGPL-3.0 (code), CC BY 4.0 (data)). No open-source release is listed for Visual Crossing Weather API.

Other comparisons with Open-Meteo or Visual Crossing Weather API

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