When Open-Meteo fits
A team choosing explicit weather variables or comparing model output rather than consuming a fixed weather-card payload.
Check before integrating
The public free service is non-commercial. Commercial subscriptions use a customer endpoint and key; attribution and workload-based call counting still matter.
Provider endpoint reference
This is Open-Meteo's documented interface. Its credentials and response format are separate from an All Them APIs account.
GET https://api.open-meteo.com/v1/forecast
Authentication: No key for non-commercial public evaluation; apikey on the paid customer host
Inputs: latitude, longitude, hourly variables; optional timezone and forecast_days
Output: Parallel hourly time/value arrays with explicit unit metadata.| Capability | What to expect |
|---|---|
| Forecast interface | Select hourly/daily variables and weather models |
| Historical workflow | Separate archive, historical forecast and model-run APIs |
| Location input | Latitude/longitude, including multi-location requests |
| Response shape | Time/value arrays and units |
| Production access | Commercial license and customer host for business use |
| Cost driver | Variables, time range, locations and plan budget |
Pricing model and production access
Commercial monthly call budgets. Requests with many variables, locations or long time ranges can count as multiple API calls. Free keyless access is for non-commercial use.
For 10,000 location-day lookups, record the requested variables and hourly/daily resolution first. A plan counting calls and a plan counting returned weather records can charge different amounts for the same HTTP request count.
Migration notes
Zip parallel arrays by index and preserve units. Historical observations, historical forecasts and previous model runs are different datasets; choose one before backtesting.
Keep provider-specific authentication and response mapping inside an adapter. Preserve source timestamps and identifiers so changing a provider does not silently change the meaning of stored records.
Open-Meteo alternatives
| Alternative | When to evaluate it |
|---|---|
| Open-Meteo vs OpenWeather | An application combining current weather, forecast intervals and alerts through a documented product family. |
| Open-Meteo vs WeatherAPI.com | An app accepting city names, postal codes or coordinates and needing a compact location-and-forecast response. |
| Open-Meteo vs Tomorrow.io | A workflow connecting weather fields to operating decisions, where the required fields and forecast intervals can be specified in advance. |
| Open-Meteo vs Visual Crossing | Historical weather joins, reporting and backfills that benefit from a consistent date-range interface. |
| Open-Meteo vs Weatherbit | An integration with a fixed daily forecast schema that may later need air-quality, agriculture or energy data. |
A fair evaluation
- Fix ten coordinates across your actual service area. Use the same UTC issue time, units and hourly window for every provider.
- Save the forecast before the event. Compare later against an agreed observation source; a successful HTTP response does not establish forecast accuracy.
- Check missing values, elevation, timezone boundaries and precipitation accumulation periods before calculating an error statistic.
- Measure p50/p95 request latency, throttling and billed units separately from forecast error. Repeat across several weather conditions.
- Confirm caching, attribution, redistribution and commercial-use terms for the exact plan. A keyless endpoint is not automatically a commercial entitlement.
A common integration contract
POST /api/v1/weather/forecastReview the request contract and tell us the coverage you need. Access requires enablement; this endpoint does not execute or bill requests yet.
View endpoint and request accessSources and review dates
Documentation reviewed October 28, 2026. These are integration and plan comparisons, not measured speed or accuracy rankings. Availability, licensing and prices should be confirmed for the chosen plan.
Corrections: email faizank@docsalot.dev with an official source.