# 6 Weather Provider APIs For Weather Data

For most software developers, learning programming wouldn't be complete without building a fully functioning weather application. Building weather apps introduces important concepts related to data retrieval and being able to display that data in a meaningful way to users.

### Before we go on, let us first remind ourselves of what an API is...

One of the most important aspects in building weather applications is the API (or Application Programming Interface).

Very briefly, an API is a communications middleman between two applications. One application acts as the requester, and the other as the requestee. Normally, the requester needs to read, update or delete information from the requestee (which is commonly a database application).

### Now back to weather APIs...

Maybe you're a hobbyist developer building a toy weather application you can show to your friends. Or, you might be a startup founder with a fabulous idea you wanna try out to help tame the effects of global warming.

In either case, you don't want to shell out a penny until your application is being used by thousands of users. Therefore you surely are looking for services that provide free access to their weather APIs.

What follows are a list of five APIs that either have a free tier or have more than a month of free trial available.

## [ClimaCell Weather API](https://www.climacell.co/weather-api/)

[](https://www.programmableweb.com/news/climacell-announces-weather-api-improvements-following-dark-sky-apis-demise/brief/2020/04/21)

**Key features**

- It has an AI-driven model that sources data from various sources such as drones, affiliated vehicles and IoT devices. It provides both hyperlocal and global real time data.
- It provides up to four weeks historical data from its partner stations and up to six hours historical data from its own stations.
- It helps you plan your travel routes via its routes feature to avoid unexpected slowdowns because of the weather.
- This API has a provision to continously monitor weather events as they unfold through alerts and dashboards that are always on.

**What you get for free**

Users on its free tier can make up to 1,000 requests daily.

## [Yahoo Weather API](https://developer.yahoo.com/weather/)

[](https://pic.clubic.com/v1/images/1505368/raw)

**Key features**

- It is very simple to use as it only requires two types of parameters - the location parameter (WOEID) and temperature unit.
- It has an RSS feed that allows users to get current information about their location.
- It offers up to five days' forecast.

**What you get for free**

For non-commercial uses you can make up to 2,000 calls per day. However, if you wish to use it commercially you first need to submit an application to Yahoo.

## [OpenWeatherMap API](https://openweathermap.org/)

[](https://blog.mestwin.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/openweathermap-1200x675.png)

**Key features**

- It provides up to 40 years of historical weather data for any location.
- It provides up to 16 days' forecast for any location.
- It is one of the most accurate APIs on this list as it sources data from over 40,000 stations worldwide.

**What you get for free**

One of the most generous free plans here as it allows for up to one million calls per month (up to 60 minute calls per minute).

## [Accuweather API](https://developer.accuweather.com/)

[](https://i.imgur.com/9nJKZ8hg.png)

**Key features**

- Most developers love its [Apigee](https://apigee.com/api-management/) portal/dashboard which allows for quick startup and easy testing. Apigee is a project with Google.
- It has an "Indices API" that provides related information such as flight delays and mosquito activities.
- It allows for customization of weather data retrieved.

**What you get for free**

Accuweather isn't really a best friend for free users as it only has a free trial that allows for 50 calls per day..

## [Weatherstack](https://weatherstack.com/)

[](https://cloud.addictivetips.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Weatherstack-API-Home-Page.png)

**Key features**

- It offers a wide range of weather data from historical to real time.
- It includes data for millions of cities worldwide (for both real-time and historical weather data).
- It is one of the most reliable APIs as it has an uptime of almost 100%.
- It offers a very fast response as it spits out lightweight JSON data.

**What you get for free**

Users on its free plan can make up to 1,000 calls per month only. The free tier is best used when your application is being tested for bugs.

## [Weather Unlocked](https://developer.weatherunlocked.com/)

[](https://rapidapi.com/blog/directory/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/https_developer.weatherunlocked.com_.png)

**Key features**

It offers three products:
- Weather Trigger which is geared for marketing and advertising use cases.
- Weather Data which provides not only the usual information but also Ski Resort snow reports and Mountain forecast APIs.
- Weather Analytics which provide useful charts and analysis of how weather can impact your business.

Based on the features of the above products, it's best used for commercial applications.

**What you get for free**

The Weather Trigger API allows for up to 20,000 requests per day and 100 requests per minute. 

Conclusion
----------

There you have it, the five best APIs you can use to build a weather application. This list isn't very exhaustive as there are a lot more that I did not include here. Whichever you choose depends on which of them you find easiest to use (though all of them have great documentations) and the level of complexity of data you need.