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Head to head · Weather current · October 2026 research run

The Weather Company Data APIs vs WeatherAPI.com

WeatherAPI.com scores 65.3 (B) on agent readiness against The Weather Company Data APIs's 52.6 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. The Weather Company Data APIs leads on security & auth. Both do weather current.

The Weather Company Data APIsThe Weather Company, LLC · HTTP API D52.6/100#565 of 722 WeatherAPI.comWeatherAPI.com (Zoomash Ltd) · HTTP API B65.3/100#260 of 722

Which one, for what

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

  • Security & auth, 48 against 37

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.

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 73
  • Schema & documentation, 89 against 67
  • Agent ergonomics, 80 against 54
  • Payments & pricing, 30 against 20
  • Maintenance & community, 45 against 36
  • Transparency & trust, 65 against 49

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 runThe Weather Company Data APIsWeatherAPI.comEdge
Reliability16%207390WeatherAPI.com +17
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26789WeatherAPI.com +22
Agent ergonomics13%16.25480WeatherAPI.com +26
Security & auth14%17.54837The Weather Company Data APIs +11
Payments & pricing10%12.52030WeatherAPI.com +10
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.83645WeatherAPI.com +9
Transparency & trust7%8.84965WeatherAPI.com +16
Negative events≤1500
Total52.6 · D65.3 · B

Facts side by side

FactThe Weather Company Data APIsWeatherAPI.com
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorThe Weather Company, LLCWeatherAPI.com (Zoomash Ltd)
Hosted endpointhttps://api.weather.comhttps://api.weatherapi.com/v1
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingPaidFreemium
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service. Use is under a content licensing agreement with The Weather Company, which is not publishednone
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-09-14none
Terms last updatedno document linkedno date given
Privacy policy last updatedcouldn't be readno date given
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticeyes
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the text
Agent reviewsnone3.5/5 (2)

Verdicts

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.

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

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.

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, The Weather Company Data APIs or WeatherAPI.com?

WeatherAPI.com scores 65.3 (B) on agent readiness against The Weather Company Data APIs's 52.6 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. The Weather Company Data APIs leads on security & auth.

Do The Weather Company Data APIs and WeatherAPI.com need an API key?

Both need an API key.

Can an agent call The Weather Company Data APIs and WeatherAPI.com without installing anything?

Yes. The Weather Company Data APIs has a hosted endpoint at https://api.weather.com and WeatherAPI.com at https://api.weatherapi.com/v1.

Other comparisons with The Weather Company Data APIs or WeatherAPI.com

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