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7 Weather Forecast API for Developing Apps

Planning a new weather app? Looking for free or premium weather API that can power your apps? Here is a list of 7 different Weather Forecast API that you can use in your apps and weather based services. You can use these weather APIs in your Android or iOS apps or in your web-services or SAAS apps for displaying current weather and forecast information.

Most of the APIs listed below provide a free plan for their usage. However, you may find certain limitation on number of API calls your app can make to them. The limits are generally extendable by paying for a premium plan. Please note that we are not affiliated with any of the services listed below.

If you are developing a weather app then you may also want to grab these free Weather icon sets too that may help you design your apps and services. Let us take look at the weather APIs now:

1. ClimaCell Weather API

The ClimaCell Weather API provides real-time and historical weather data with cutting-edge features such as monitors (insights and alerts) and data about weather, air quality, pollen, road risk as well as fire index. The API offers numerical data and map layers that provide hyper-local minute-by-minute updates about global weather (historical, real-time, and forecast).

ClimaCell provides 6 hours of historical data based on sensor technology of actual field observations. Moreover, they offer up to 4 weeks of historical station data on METAR-certified and other stations.

You can receive the weather data for your application by REST API using JSON with HTTPS support. The free plan also includes access to building your own Weather widgets using their API.

Price:  Free for 1000 calls per day. Up-gradable (See Pricing)

API:  ClimaCell Weather API

2. Open Weather Map

The OpenWeatherMap service provides free weather data and forecast API suitable for any cartographic services like web and smartphones applications.

Ideology is inspired by OpenStreetMap and Wikipedia that make information free and available for everybody.

OpenWeatherMap provides wide range of weather data such as map with current weather, week forecast, precipitation, wind, clouds, data from weather Stations and many others. Weather data is received from global Meteorological broadcast services and more than 40 000 weather stations.

You can receive any weather data for your application by using JSON / XML API

Price:  Free 50 calls per minute, Up-gradable (See pricing details)

API: OpenWeatherMap API Docs

3. AccuWeather

AccuWeather provides premium weather forecasting services worldwide. The AccuWeather API provides subscribers access to location based weather data via a simple RESTful web interface. Data is available in more than 40 languages and dialects. Data responses are returned in JSON and JSONP. SSL encryption is also available for secure communication.

Access to the AccuWeather API requires an API key.  Contact sales@accuweather.com to receive an API key.

Update: AccuWeather now offers a new API Developer Portal for easier access of the API: https://developer.accuweather.com/

Price: Premium (See pricing details)

API: AccuWeather API docs

4. The Weather Channel

The Weather Channel is an American satellite television channel providing weather forecast for more than 30 years. The Weather Channel and Weather Underground, Inc partnered to provide weather API with global coverage in 80 languages.

You can receive weather data for your application in JSON or XML. GIF, PNG or SWF format is also offered.

Price: Premium (See pricing details)

API: The Weather Channel API docs

5. weatherstack (Formerly APIXU)

Weatherstack provides a Weather API service in JSON and XML format. Their free plan has a limit of 1000 API calls per month.

They offer current weather information as well as 10 day forecast along with 30 days weather history in the free plan.

API libraries are available in all major programming languages such as C#, PHP, JAVA, Ruby, Python and JavaScript.

Price: Free for 1000 API calls monthly. Up-gradable (See Pricing)

API: weatherstack API

6. World Weather Online

World Weather Online APIs provide a way to get local weather, historical local weather, ski and mountain weather and marine weather data. The APIs deliver weather information using standard HTTP/S requests in formats like XML, JSON and JSON-P.

They provide an API explorer for you to dive deep into their APIs. While their free plan is now discontinued, you can try their premium API for 60 days.

Code examples in all major programming languages is provided on their website, including VB.Net, PHP, Objective-C, C# etc.

Price: Premium with 60 day free trial (See Pricing)

API: World Weather Online API

7. Weatherbit.io

Weatherbit.io provides free weather API as well as historic weather data API. Their free plan allows 45 API calls per minute along with access to 30 days historic weather data and 5 day forecast at an update interval of 2 hours.

You would need to upgrade to a premium plan to get access to HTTPS API calls, as well to reduce the update interval to 10 mins. By upgrading you can also get access to hourly weather forecast and higher limit on API calls per minute.

Price: Free tier with premium upgrades (See Pricing)

API: Weatherbit.io API

Summary

Weather plays a primary role in our personal as well as professional lives. Having a daily check on weather as well as access to forecast information is crucial for many apps and services. Using the weather API services listed above, you can build your own service or apps around weather forecasting. What’s great with many of these weather API services offering a free tier, is that you can easily try out the service first in your apps during the development phase and only opt for the premium plan when you need more API requests once you have a good user base.

There are many other weather forecast API that we could have included in our list above. However we wanted to keep this list short with the most popular weather forecast APIs having easy to find pricing and API details.

If you have used any other Weather Forecast API in your app that you found great, let us know in comments along with your app details. Also do let us know of your experience in using the Weather Forecast APIs listed above.

Categories: Development
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