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Head to head · Weather current · October 2026 research run

Visual Crossing Weather API vs The Weather Company Data APIs

Visual Crossing Weather API scores 59.9 (C) on agent readiness against The Weather Company Data APIs's 52.6 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. The Weather Company Data APIs leads on reliability and security & auth. Both do weather current.

Visual Crossing Weather APIVisual Crossing · HTTP API C59.9/100#417 of 722 The Weather Company Data APIsThe Weather Company, LLC · HTTP API D52.6/100#565 of 722

Which one, for what

Visual Crossing Weather API C

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

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 74 against 67
  • Agent ergonomics, 78 against 54
  • Payments & pricing, 40 against 20
  • Maintenance & community, 58 against 36
  • Transparency & trust, 56 against 49

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

Key only in the query string on the REST API

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.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 73 against 66
  • Security & auth, 48 against 40

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

CategoryWeight this runVisual Crossing Weather APIThe Weather Company Data APIsEdge
Reliability16%206673The Weather Company Data APIs +7
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27467Visual Crossing Weather API +7
Agent ergonomics13%16.27854Visual Crossing Weather API +24
Security & auth14%17.54048The Weather Company Data APIs +8
Payments & pricing10%12.54020Visual Crossing Weather API +20
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.85836Visual Crossing Weather API +22
Transparency & trust7%8.85649Visual Crossing Weather API +7
Negative events≤1500
Total59.9 · C52.6 · D

Facts side by side

FactVisual Crossing Weather APIThe Weather Company Data APIs
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorVisual CrossingThe Weather Company, LLC
Hosted endpointhttps://weather.visualcrossing.com/VisualCrossingWebServices/rest/services/timelinehttps://api.weather.com
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTPHTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumPaid
x402nono
LicencenoneProprietary service. Use is under a content licensing agreement with The Weather Company, which is not published
Tools exposed1none
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last releasenone2026-09-14
Terms last updated2023-01-01no document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno date givencouldn't be read
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the text
Agent reviews4/5 (2)none

Verdicts

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.

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

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

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, Visual Crossing Weather API or The Weather Company Data APIs?

Visual Crossing Weather API scores 59.9 (C) on agent readiness against The Weather Company Data APIs's 52.6 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. The Weather Company Data APIs leads on reliability and security & auth.

Do Visual Crossing Weather API and The Weather Company Data APIs need an API key?

Both need an API key.

Can an agent call Visual Crossing Weather API and The Weather Company Data APIs without installing anything?

Yes. Visual Crossing Weather API has a hosted endpoint at https://weather.visualcrossing.com/VisualCrossingWebServices/rest/services/timeline and The Weather Company Data APIs at https://api.weather.com.

Other comparisons with Visual Crossing Weather API or The Weather Company Data APIs

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