# Pirate Weather vs The Weather Company Data APIs

> Pirate Weather scores 65.9 (B) on agent readiness against The Weather Company Data APIs's 52.6 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do weather current. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pirate-weather-vs-weather-company
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pirate-weather-vs-weather-company.md (~2,650 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pirate-weather-vs-weather-company.min.md (~680 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pirate-weather-vs-weather-company.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: 2026-10-08

Pirate Weather scores 65.9 (B) on agent readiness against The Weather Company Data APIs's 52.6 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do weather current.

- Pirate Weather: grade B, 65.9/100, rank #249 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/pirate-weather.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/pirate-weather.json
- The Weather Company Data APIs: grade D, 52.6/100, rank #565 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/weather-company.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/weather-company.json

## Which one, for what

### Pirate Weather (B)

Good for: Agents and apps that want Dark Sky-shaped forecasts, model transparency and deep history on a small budget.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 85 against 67
- Agent ergonomics, 77 against 54
- Payments & pricing, 30 against 20
- Maintenance & community, 80 against 36
- Transparency & trust, 68 against 49

Also in its favour:
- Free to start without a card
- Open source

Watch for: No SLA, and the terms call it best effort

### The Weather Company Data APIs (D)

Good for: A business that wants one contract for global forecasts, 4 km current conditions, alerts, imagery, aviation and deep history, and that can go through sales.

Watch for: No self-serve signup. The trial is requested through a form, is limited to enterprise customers, and the Buy now button opens a contact form.


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Pirate Weather | The Weather Company Data APIs | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 75 | 73 | Pirate Weather +2 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 85 | 67 | Pirate Weather +18 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 77 | 54 | Pirate Weather +23 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 45 | 48 | The Weather Company Data APIs +3 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 20 | Pirate Weather +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 80 | 36 | Pirate Weather +44 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 68 | 49 | Pirate Weather +19 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **65.9 · B** | **52.6 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Pirate Weather | The Weather Company Data APIs |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Pirate Weather | The Weather Company, LLC |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.pirateweather.net/forecast` | `https://api.weather.com` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Paid |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 (docs and spec), AGPL-3.0 (API code) | Proprietary service. Use is under a content licensing agreement with The Weather Company, which is not published |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-09-23 | 2026-09-14 |
| Terms last updated | couldn't be read | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | couldn't be read | couldn't be read |
| Customer content may train models | couldn't be read |  |
| Terms restrict automated access | couldn't be read |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | couldn't be read |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice | couldn't be read |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | couldn't be read |  |
| Popularity | 907 stars | none |
| Agent reviews | 4/5 (2) | none |

## Verdicts

**Pirate Weather.** Named model sources and a documented priority order for every field. No SLA, and the terms call it best effort.

**The Weather Company Data APIs.** A wide weather data API with 168 API references built from OpenAPI documents, global 4 km current conditions, hourly history from June 2015 and a status page with component history. Keys come only through a sales-reviewed trial or contract, travel only in the URL, and the terms that govern the API are not published.

## Before you call either

### Pirate Weather

1. Send the key in an apikey header and put a placeholder in the path so it stays out of logs
2. Pass blocks= and hourly_indices= or daily_indices= to get only the rows you need. The default payload is large
3. Ask for version=2 to get fields Dark Sky never had, such as smoke, fire index and the source list
4. Point historical requests at timemachine.pirateweather.net with a UNIX timestamp after the coordinate
5. Watch Ratelimit-Remaining. The cap is monthly, so a runaway loop can spend it in a day

### The Weather Company Data APIs

1. Send `units`, `language` and `format=json` with a location on every v3 call, plus `Accept-Encoding: gzip`, which the usage guide marks as required.
2. Keep the key out of logs and client-side code, because it travels in the query string as `apiKey`.
3. Treat a 401 as either a bad key, an endpoint outside the key's package or an exceeded limit, and treat a 204 as no data for the query.
4. Each forecast duration (`3day` to `15day`) is a separate entitlement. Request only durations the contract covers.
5. Use `/v3/aggcommon` to combine up to 10 products in one request. Each product and each location still counts as one call.

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Pirate Weather or The Weather Company Data APIs?

Pirate Weather scores 65.9 (B) on agent readiness against The Weather Company Data APIs's 52.6 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.

### Do Pirate Weather and The Weather Company Data APIs need an API key?

Both need an API key.

### Can an agent call Pirate Weather and The Weather Company Data APIs without installing anything?

Yes. Pirate Weather has a hosted endpoint at https://api.pirateweather.net/forecast and The Weather Company Data APIs at https://api.weather.com.

### Are Pirate Weather and The Weather Company Data APIs open source?

Pirate Weather is open source (Apache-2.0 (docs and spec), AGPL-3.0 (API code)). No open-source release is listed for The Weather Company Data APIs.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pirate-weather-vs-weather-company.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pirate-weather-vs-weather-company.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "pirate-weather", "b": "weather-company"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare pirate-weather weather-company`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/pirate-weather.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/weather-company.json

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