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Head to head · Weather data · October 2026 research run

Open-Meteo vs WeatherAPI.com

WeatherAPI.com scores 65.3 (B) on agent readiness against Open-Meteo's 63.4 (B), and leads in 2 of 7 scored categories. Open-Meteo leads on agent ergonomics, payments & pricing, maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do weather data.

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Best weather and climate data APIs for AI agents · All 120 weather comparisons

Open-MeteoOpen-Meteo · HTTP API B63.4/100#394 of 950 WeatherAPI.comWeatherAPI.com (Zoomash Ltd) · HTTP API B65.3/100#321 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 80
  • Payments & pricing, 50 against 30
  • Maintenance & community, 90 against 45
  • Transparency & trust, 72 against 65

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Open source
  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 4.0 against 3.5 out of 5

Watch for

Commercial prices appear only at Stripe checkout

WeatherAPI.com B

Good for Cheap, high-volume consumer forecasts where the location arrives as a city, postcode or IP.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 90 against 50
  • Schema & documentation, 89 against 77

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

Key only in the query string, and no security.txt

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runOpen-MeteoWeatherAPI.comEdge
Reliability16%205090WeatherAPI.com +40
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27789WeatherAPI.com +12
Agent ergonomics13%16.28580Open-Meteo +5
Security & auth14%17.53837Open-Meteo +1
Payments & pricing10%12.55030Open-Meteo +20
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.89045Open-Meteo +45
Transparency & trust7%8.87265Open-Meteo +7
Negative events≤1500
Total63.4 · B65.3 · B

Facts side by side

FactOpen-MeteoWeatherAPI.com
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorOpen-MeteoWeatherAPI.com (Zoomash Ltd)
Hosted endpointhttps://api.open-meteo.com/v1/forecasthttps://api.weatherapi.com/v1
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthNoneAPI key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nono
LicenceAGPL-3.0 (code), CC BY 4.0 (data)none
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-09-10none
Terms last updatedno date givenno date given
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 textyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textyes
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textnot found in the text
Popularity6.2k starsnone
Agent reviews4/5 (2)3.5/5 (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.

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

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

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

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Open-Meteo or WeatherAPI.com?

WeatherAPI.com scores 65.3 (B) on agent readiness against Open-Meteo's 63.4 (B), and leads in 2 of 7 scored categories. Open-Meteo leads on agent ergonomics, payments & pricing, maintenance & community and transparency & trust.

Do Open-Meteo and WeatherAPI.com need an API key?

Open-Meteo needs no key. WeatherAPI.com needs an API key.

Can an agent call Open-Meteo and WeatherAPI.com without installing anything?

Yes. Open-Meteo has a hosted endpoint at https://api.open-meteo.com/v1/forecast and WeatherAPI.com at https://api.weatherapi.com/v1.

Are Open-Meteo and WeatherAPI.com open source?

Open-Meteo is open source (AGPL-3.0 (code), CC BY 4.0 (data)). No open-source release is listed for WeatherAPI.com.

Other comparisons with Open-Meteo or WeatherAPI.com

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