AccuWeather to discontinue free access to Core Weather API
256 comments
·July 23, 2025JoshGlazebrook
ge96
Is there any way people would be incentivized to setup a little weather station/contribute to data and get paid. Wonder if there's a model where people could make money/not game the system too. It would have to be standardized/verified to be accurate somehow.
Aurornis
Blockchain people have been trying variations of this for a decade. Any time you create a system that pays people for data, it will be exploited to the extreme.
I don’t think you need to incentivize people to provide weather data. Just make it easy to set up a station and get a lot of people interested. There are already hobby stations out there and networks for them.
noosphr
Blockchains have clearance rates that are a few dozen orders of magnitude too slow for this. Bitcoin for example clears 7 transactions per second.
ge96
Time series database comes in ding ding
Yeah I could see the hobby-drive there
asteroidburger
Many people have no problem setting up a station and giving away the data for free.
This is primarily for air quality by default, but you can get temperature, humidity, etc as well. For each station, someone paid for the hardware and is sharing the data gratis.
pridkett
You’ve just described Ambient Weather. What I find kinda funny about that is they still try to upsell you to get more than 1 year of data retention.
Luckily, they allow you to configure additional arbitrary locations to pump data to. I wrote a little program to drop that data into an InfluxDB database (along with PurpleAir, AirGradient, AirThings, Solar Data, and Iotawatt). The only practical use I’ve found is to look and see “When was the last time we head three days in a row that were so windy?” I suppose I could do fun stuff with Home Assistant too.
munk-a
This feels like a great thing for the government to do which is why NOAA/NWS have traditionally maintained these services. The data these stations produce nationally is valuable but hard to quantify on an individual station level - should the station that detects vital data about a hurricane be given a large bonus for it? If so we'll end up with extremely lopsided coverage while the information from nearby weather systems can be invaluable.
arghwhat
You need to collect data and run the weather models, which for good ones could require a lot of continuous compute resources.
bigiain
I'd be a little surprised if Google (or even Apple) haven't considered trying to use cell phone temp and pressure sensor data collected across the entire fleet of devices running their OS. Similar to the recent Android earthquake warning thing, or Google's traffic data.
Like others have pointed out though, gathering observation data is only part of the problem. Turning current and historical observations into usable and accurate forecasts is a big compute heavy task, and whoever is paying for that compute needs either government funding, which is not easy in the age of DOGE, or to charge for the forecasts.
I have a weather station that collects temp, pressure, wind speed and direction rainfall - and which has wifi and built in capability to send it's data to a bunch of web services. Sadly, it's still in the box it came in because I haven't got around to installing it and the burst of enthusiasm the inspired me to buy it has long since died. (If anyone in Sydney Australia wants it, reply here and we might be able to organise for you to come collect it.)
eurleif
Is there a feasible way to turn noisy cell phone temperature data into reliable weather data? Cell phones can be indoors; they can be in someone's pocket next to their body heat; they can be in direct sunlight; and they can generate a lot of heat themselves under load. And it's not just outlier phones that aren't in a position to accurately measure outdoor temperature; it's probably the majority of phones at any given time.
wmeredith
> Wonder if there's a model where people could make money/not game the system too.
We're up against the most basic of human nature here.
vlod
>It would have to be standardized/verified to be accurate somehow.
You could do something that for the same zip/county, aggregates the results based on a certain percentage. You could weight it based on how many times a user is outside this range. (e.g. bad actors)
I just got zigbee working in my house (SONOFF Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus Gateway). Is there any recommended weather nuts out there that could recommend a weather device (that they like and is cool), just in case someone wants to create a project and is looking for data providers.
avhon1
People pay to have a tempest weather station
paranoidrobot
Same deal for Ecowitt: https://www.ecowitt.net/ (sign up required)
I can access any other publicly shared Ecowitt station's data.
x0x0
That's pretty cool, thank you for sharing.
Do you have any idea if you can plug this thing into a public api to share?
ge96
interesting design, doesn't have the cliche anemometer spoons
kjkjadksj
Aren’t all these services just abrogating some national weather service data? Is that api exposed to the public?
jimmaswell
Yes, and it's a free public service as I would expect. https://www.weather.gov/documentation/services-web-api
SkyeCA
I never considered government weather departments would provide APIs for their data, but after seeing your comment I went to see if Environment Canada provided one.
I am very impressed by how how much data they provide free of charge.
perfectviking
For now. A component of Project 2025 is to remove the public access.
squigz
It's almost as if APIs cost money to run?!
scarface_74
Dark Sky was never free for unlimited use.
It’s now Apple’s WeatherKit.
The first 500K calls a month is free with a $99 a year Apple Developer account and there is a standard REST API for none Apple OS’s.
margalabargala
> The first 500K calls a month is free with a $99 a year[...]
They may be included with your $99/year subscription, but to call them "free" is like saying that the groceries I'm holding are free because I just gave the cashier money.
hoosier2gator
I would say it's more like saying that driving on the highway is free because you pay taxes. I doubt anyone is buying a developer account specifically for weather API calls.
kjkjadksj
I feel its not nearly as useful as the old darksky api. The secret sauce of that software was that it combined typical weather data with local reports. Afaik there is no way to submit a weather report on the apple weather app. They bought it for the name and to kill a competing option essentially vs attempting to use what made that app actually compelling compared to other weather apps.
svarrall
If you scroll down on to the bottom of Apple Weather it has a “Report an Issue” button which allows you to report current weather conditions at your location.
I have no idea what happens to that data and if it contributes to the report in any way.
OptionOfT
There actually is.
At the bottom - report an issue.
otterley
NWS's APIs are still free of charge: https://www.weather.gov/documentation/services-web-api
macintux
For now. There's a pretty decent chance that AccuWeather is discontinuing this in anticipation that the NWS is going to be sabotaged.
Update: https://gizmodo.com/republicans-project-2025-would-end-free-...
imglorp
If the sabotage proceeds, effects will be felt by nautical, aviation, agriculture, commerce, water management, hydroelectric, and on and on. Weather is critical infrastructure for everything like roads and power. It can't be replaced by privatization.
It's another attack from within.
arm32
> It's another attack from within.
So, Wednesday?
ToucanLoucan
You're not wrong, but their idiotic ideas having catastrophic effects hasn't stopped them doing anything yet. Probably because none of them have a clue what they're doing.
Alupis
> It's another attack from within.
The amount of fearmongering and scaremongering in this thread is literally off the charts.
No, the weather service isn't being shut down... one private organization decides to charge for API access (you know, to make money) and immediately you folks go straight into sabotage and end-of-the-world conspiracy theories.
It took me all of 3 seconds to find several mentions to the big ooga-booga, "project 2025". The article is literally about a private organization and you folks go right into the conspiracies... it's exhausting.
At this point, I think I have to assume some of you actually enjoy being afraid. Some sort of coping mechanism for losing an election and not getting your way for 4 years...
_heimdall
Aren't the problems you point to just business justification for companies offering this service for a fee rather than subsidizing the fees with federal debt?
appreciatorBus
If weather info is that valuable to so many private interests, wouldn't the public get a better deal by insisting that private interests pay market prices (to the public service provider) for that info?
We commonly assume that a publicly owned service serves the public good by giving away the service for free, but this assumes the public's only role is as passive consumer, whose sole interest is seeing the price as low as possible, if not $0
However the public is also the owner and as owners of the service, we are arguably being taking advantage of by private interests who take the free data, only to turn around and create private value with it.
sbstp
Project 2025 strongly opposes everything good in this world.
reactordev
To them, it’s bad, to us, it’s good. Good and bad are subjective when one side refuses science. You can show them data until you’re blue in the face but they won’t understand it, they won’t listen to reason because they are on a mission to remake the US like their racist grandfathers liked it. All workers report to the floor.
pstuart
Their adherents are too irony impaired to realize that "they are the baddies".
exe34
> “These form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity,” Project 2025 says. “This industry’s mission emphasis on prediction and management seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable.”
Shoot the messenger and bury your head in the sand!
input_sh
For context, this is something AccuWeather in particular lobbied for for decades. This was their goal in particular.
In 2005: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Weather_Service_Dutie...
> In the wake of the bill's introduction, Santorum was accused of political impropriety and influence peddling because Joel Myers, the head of Pennsylvania-based AccuWeather and one of Santorum's constituents, was also a Santorum campaign contributor.
In 2017, when Berry Myers (AKA the CEO of AccuWeather) was nominated to head the NOAA, but was never confirmed into the position (due to the series of sexual misconduct at the company), ultimately withdrewing his nomination two years later.
Right now, when Neil Jacobs (long time vocal proponent of comercialising weather data who maintained a social media profile called "The Greatest Hoax" in reference to climate change) and Taylor Jordan (a lobbyist for many weather companies, including AccuWeather of course) got appointed into the position of overseeing NOAA.
ndiddy
Meanwhile China has reached their 2030 goal of peak CO2 emissions 5 years early by rapidly deploying solar/wind/nuclear and manufacturing cheap EVs for personal transport. I wish the US was capable of working towards and achieving large-scale societal goals like that.
ryandrake
None of it even makes any sense. So, our national ability to predict whether it's going to rain this weekend, anywhere in the country, is "climate change alarm?"
evilkorn
Don't look up
michaelsshaw
It's funny that they call it planning for the unplannable when the NWS have given extremely specific instructions on what to do in all sorts of inclement situations. This passage was just baffling.
throw0101b
Yeah:
> "The Pentagon ... announced that we are eliminating woke climate change programs and initiatives inconsistent with our core warfighting mission," [Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell] said.
* https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/41...
See also "Pentagon Starts Purging Climate Change Measures":
* https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-pentagon-pu...
But from 2021 (during Biden), "Climate change is a risk to national security, the Pentagon says"
* https://www.npr.org/2021/10/26/1049222045/the-pentagon-says-...
vorgol
Project 2025 is 46% completed: https://www.project2025.observer/
GlitchRider47
Strange that their progress distribution chart shows a lower percentage (36%) which happens to be the correct one: https://www.project2025.observer/visualize/charts
LordDragonfang
That's not a meaningful percentage.
Project 2025 is a comprehensive conservative wish list. It's only scary because of the outrageous items mixed in with all the unremarkable ones that any conservative would put forth. You would expect any conservative, even a "good" one, to knock off a huge portion of the list just by virtue of being conservative; that tells us almost nothing about the likelihood of most of the rest of the list (especially from an administration that has at least claimed to disavow it)
Project 2025 is scary because of what it tells us about the American voters that support it, not because it has some sort of prognosticative power over what the Trump admin will actually do. It's about the Overton Window, not the Oval Office.
throw0101b
> https://gizmodo.com/republicans-project-2025-would-end-free-...
John Oliver did an episode on this during Trump 1.0:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMGn9T37eR8
* https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11110660/
* s06e26: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Last_Week_Tonight_with...
* https://old.reddit.com/r/television/comments/dhmo0c/weather_...
lelandfe
Also talked about in Michael Lewis’s book Fifth Risk.
_heimdall
This is one I don't really understand why the change would be a huge deal in context, the framing of an article as republicans sabotaging the miracle of free weather report APIs is just confusing.
If our government were massively in debt and continuing to increase the deficit, maybe I'd understand wanting to consider weather report APIs as a public good worth funding with tax dollars. We should be cutting everything we can to avoid a complete train wreck though, why would this float to the top of the list?
Eric_WVGG
First, shutting down programs like this is like leaving the lights off in your home because you can't make rent of the mortgage. Saving $0.025 off your energy bill is not going to meaningfully help.
Second, it’s at the top because it’s a public good of obviously enormous value that a common shmuck can understand.
monkeywork
>This is one I don't really understand why the change would be a huge deal in context
This is likely because you don't use the weather reports for anything of value/importance in your daily life - there are other professions / government departments / etc that DO use these reports and require them for safety reasons.
Just for a quick example anyone involved in aviation.
inetknght
> We should be cutting everything we can to avoid a complete train wreck though, why would this float to the top of the list?
It makes a lot more sense when you consider that certain people think that climate change isn't real while weather science supports the idea that the climate not only can change but is changing, and that humans are the cause of it.
bearcobra
Weather data is incredibly important to a huge number of activities and to the general safety of the public, which is why the government is providing it in the first place. Debt to fund it is almost certain to economically productive. The republican controlled congress is cutting taxes and raising debt levels. A similar argument could be made that we should continue to fund services and raise taxes to reduce deficits instead
jwagenet
The problem is this predicted cut and others are a drop in the bucket (for the government). They are a rounding error compared to what’s added to spending with the recent bill.
rurp
The same people who want to cut this service just added a million times that amount to the national debt. Any claim that this is about saving money is transparent bullshit.
Free weather data has massive positive externalities. Just like in so many other areas, this administration is destroying a common good to benefit a handful of private individuals.
gxs
Because it’s not a drop in the bucket, it’s not even a droplet of mist
There are so many things to clean up before you get to this
Given that, Idy pose the same question to you, why prioritize cutting this?
I would almost consider this public infrastructure and we should definitely keep it
runarb
The Norwegian Meteorological Institute also have free forecast for any location on earth: https://developer.yr.no/featured-products/forecast/
aredox
The Norwegian meteorological Institute, as well as all European meteorological agencies, shares but also rely on shared data from other agencies, including NOAA. Most of the Atlantic weather buoys, for example...
cyberax
They won't have access to the same primary data as the NWS. Although it might be an opportunity for something like PurpleAir.
cmiles74
AccuWeather has been trying to privatize NWS since it's inception. I believe the current head of the NOAA was actually the AccuWeather CEO. IMHO, it's only a matter of time before he shuts off public access to NSW forecase data, no matter the impact on real people and businesses (except maybe AccuWeather).
https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/14/politics/noaa-nominee-accuwea...
bix6
NWS costs $1.3B a year and the ROI is 5-11x based on reports I can find. So every $1 gives Americans $11 of value. But yeah let’s trash it to save money or whatever…
Brosper
USA is only one country. What about the rest?
otterley
Feel free to add links to the APIs for your countries' meteorological services here. I know about Canada's: https://api.weather.gc.ca
fitsumbelay
Yep
donohoe
"AccuWeather is excited to share important updates"
Yes. Yes, I'm sure you are.
tailspin2019
Such corporate speak reminds me of “the values of the Carphone Warehouse”:
moontear
"excited" and "designed to elevate your experience" is such a weird way to put this. They are introducing more monetization options, which is their right to do. But different monetization options and discontinuation of a free-tier does not elevate anyone's experience.
amysox
That's like the old saying that when a company starts its message with "In order to serve you better...", what they really mean is "Bend over and assume the position."
Havoc
The march towards walled gardens continues.
The internet as we know it (blogs etc) is going to stop existing and this will just turn into an protocol layer communicating between said walled gardens
Bit miffed that the big tech orgs basically killed something that could be organic & community driven. If somehow a path could have been found to maintain and possibly even scale that sort of grassroot internet I think it could have turned into something unimaginably awesome. Big tech actively killed that trajectory
Zenbit_UX
Sure Apple, fb and LinkedIn were private gardens before it was cool, but there was still some incentive for some companies to stay public. That is until the AI wars and scrapping the entire internet constantly for training data was the norm.
gip
WalleD gardens and walleT gardens - e.g. micropayments will make it possible to monetize data to the fullest and every users will need a wallet to access anything fresh online. That seems to be the trend, but I suspect a counter-trend will emerge too.
jasonthorsness
I ran a weather site for a year or so (that also showed YESTERDAY'S weather, that was the key feature) using visual crossing's data, until someone started scraping all the cities of the world every hour and running up my costs (visual crossing is pay-per-data-point) so I had to shut it down.
It surprises me that in 2025 we can't just support global free weather data as some kind of cooperative service. It's not like it's high-bandwidth or even all that high-volume.
Leftium
My app also shows yesterday's weather: https://weather-sense.leftium.com
- It uses open-meteo's API. Before open-meteo, I tried with OpenWeatherMap's API.
- However, besides requiring an additional call for each previous day's data, OpenWeatherMap's One Call API only supported local time zones for current and forecast data. So depending on the timezone and time, there could be a big gap in the data that needed to be filled with timezone math (and extra API calls. The original DarkSky One Call API did not have this issue.)
dawnerd
There is public free weather, for now at least, where do you think the private weather companies source it from? They’re just repackaging it.
jasonthorsness
The last time I had checked (this was over a year ago) there was nothing that provided world-wide data in a consistent format except the paid APIs, of which only one had a good historical data service.
I could switch my site to just use NWS and be US only I suppose; better than just being completely off. Adding all the weather services of every country in the world is too much for me (and why I guess the paid services are value-add).
Ueland
The Norwegian MET has had it for years, for free. https://api.met.no/
They also provide yr.no which is widely used worldwide.
tempestn
Fantastic feature btw; certainly more than once I've wished weather apps/sites would show recent history.
Leftium
I wanted the same thing, so I built: https://weather-sense.leftium.com
- I even blogged about this over 10 years ago: https://blog.leftium.com/2013/12/how-to-display-temperature-...
- Previous version used to show two historical days: https://github.com/Leftium/ultra-weather
- The current version is capable of showing the previous 90 days. I plan to add a weekly overview with two previous days.
BTW the https://open-meteo.com API supports getting historical and forecast data in a single call. All other API's require at least two calls.
whalesalad
Your statements are somewhat contradictory. You said that you were being scraped so you had to shut the service down due to costs... but then you also say that this not a high-bandwidth or high-volume service.
jasonthorsness
I was the only regular user (it's basically a POC/concept site), so it was extremely low volume except for the scraper(s), who suddenly became high-volume. I could have done more research into scraper/bot blocking but I didn't have the time and needed to respond to the scrapers immediately, so I pulled the plug.
EDIT: I have also since learned of Vercel's bot/scraper blocking features so I'm also going to try turning those on and see if it stops the scraping.
nox_pp
For https://luxweather.com I detect bots/scrapers by user agent and just serve them a fake forecast, brought our bill way down :)
stego-tech
Serious question: what other national or global-level weather services are freely available via API to end users? With AccuWeather going all-in on premium access and the NWS/NOAA being sabotaged, is there anywhere else with freely available high-quality data out there in readily-ingestible formats?
open-meteo
I’ve been building an open-source weather API over the past few years. It pulls in data from a wide range of global and local high-resolution weather models. The API is free to use without an API key, though there are commercial options available. I'm the sole owner behind it. No VC funding or outside backing.
The core tech is tuned for performance, using local gridded files instead of a traditional database or response caching. This efficiency is what allows it to stay free.
You can try it here: https://open-meteo.com
RebeccaTheDev
Just wanted to say thank you for this service. I have a little homebrew clock I build from a Raspberry Pi and a small display in my bathroom. Below the time, it displays the weather forecast for the day so I know how to dress. That little clock has become an essential piece of my morning routine.
I switched to Open Meteo a few months ago when the previous API I was using quit working. It's been rock solid and such a nice user experience compared to everything else I tried.
jasonthorsness
Awesome, I will change https://weather.bingo to use this service; the previous paid API I used was too expensive to justify given I was the only real user :P.
jasonthorsness
Claude Code made short work of converting to Open Meteo and https://weather.bingo is BACK! great service, thanks!
selecsosi
Just wanted to say, seeing you in the wild, thank you very much for the hard work you do on OpenMeteo.
Picked up a commercial license about 3 months ago, service is amazing and have been using it for helping to provide runtime data analysis and anomaly detection for smart home thermostats.
jamesblonde
Love open-meteo - no registration or API key required. Great for tutorials. I used it my upcoming O'Reilly book- use weather to predict air quality at the street level: https://github.com/featurestorebook/mlfs-book/
dejobaan
This is fantastic; thank you for it. The "try the API" page is also excellent!
geoka9
So true, it is so awesome. I've just replaced my weather network bookmark with the open-meteo's "API Response" chart. I hope open-meteo doesn't mind :)
nox_pp
Have been meaning to look into OpenMeteo for https://luxweather.com
We've been using OWM but the One Call API quickly gets pricey when traffic spikes.
slenk
I use that in HomeAssistant. Love it!
rajh
In the Netherlands we have the KNMI data platform (https://dataplatform.knmi.nl) and also an open source weather app (https://gitlab.com/KNMI-OSS/KNMI-App).
slenk
I noticed that before when looking at some weather APIs. You have a lot better data in Europe available
saint_yossarian
Here's a convenient list: https://github.com/breezy-weather/breezy-weather/blob/main/d...
theshrike79
Openweathermap works: https://openweathermap.org/price
I've been using their free (2.5?) API for a while and just last week moved on to the paid-but-with-free-tier 3.0 API for more info.
You just need to put in your credit card (most likely to prove you're an actual human being) and that'll net you 1000 requests per day for free.
Then go into the settings and set a hard limit at 999 and you'll never get billed.
If whatever you're doing needs to get weather data more often than once per minute, start charging for it or cache data on your end more aggressively to not hit the limit.
Ueland
The Norwegian MET does, https://api.met.no/
They also provide yr.no which is widely used worldwide.
theshrike79
I think yr.no is the default source for Home Assistant
wuyishan
I've recently found https://open-meteo.com/ - maybe that ticks some of the boxes?
SSJPython
Why is something so essential, so basic, like the weather forecast being privatized? Why is everything becoming so shit?
masklinn
Because nothing can exist in America if middlemen don’t make money out of it, the more the better.
You can see a literal example of that thinking in the comments of _heimdall for whom valuable commons are unexploited business cases.
gaws
Everything's getting more expensive, and people need to get paid.
CamperBob2
Because stupid people are easy to herd to the polls.
swyx
because good data costs money?
how would you feel if you were the SWE on the other side of this API and people demand it for free
Sohcahtoa82
This carries the same energy as arguing against "free" healthcare by claiming that doctors shouldn't be expected to work for free.
Nobody is expecting anybody to work for free. We expect government to pay for it. I think you know this and pretend not to for some reason.
monkeywork
There is an SWE on the other side of this API - and I imagine they are enjoying a government salary and pension for operating it... people accessing it for free wouldn't impact them.
Vinnl
Usually the opposite of privatisation is not that something magically appears for free, but that it is funded by a state.
cindyllm
[dead]
mkerrigan
OpenWeather still has a free tier. https://openweathermap.org/
Sohcahtoa82
Yup! I use it for an IRC bot that allows users to request the current weather or a forecast for a location.
Unfortunately, the API for searching for a location is terrible and often gets locations wrong.
mlhpdx
If you’d like a preview of what access to weather data will be like (soon) just have a look at access to nautical navigation charts.
bhickey
Time to dust off CloudyFS, the first filesystem to put the clouds in your files.
lxgr
Semi off-topic, but does anybody know a good weather radar app that has coverage outside the US (with particular interest in Europe)?
Apple/Dark Sky seems to only cover a very limited number of countries (despite many more providing radar data under open access), and zoom.earth seems to be shutting down precipitation radar by September.
Leftium
I'm working on a weather web app that has world-wide radar coverage: https://weather-sense.leftium.com
The radar data is from the RainViewer API: https://www.rainviewer.com/api.html
- Hmm... it seems this API is also being limited/discontinued...
- I think past radar will continue to work, but only to zoom level 10/7.
- And the future 30-90 minutes of predicted radar will no longer work.
My project was inspired by: https://merrysky.net (And the OG Dark Sky UI)
frm88
I second windy. Very detailed and precise. Supports several models/data sources like ECMWF, Arome, Meteo Blue etc. They still have a free tier with a 5-day forecast and a very expensive premium tier (10 days, I believe??) - but everything longer than 5 days tends to get increasingly im precise anyways.
lxgr
My use case is usually evading thunderstorms when cycling/hiking, which are ~impossible to predict more than a few hours ahead of time anyway, so this works perfectly. Thank you!
jonp888
I use WetterOnline, it's German but I think it covers all of Europe.
hnburnsy
Windy
Another one bites the dust. I've used weather underground api, yahoo weather api, dark sky api, and all of them have gone from free to paid (or just not public anymore) over the years. Currently using pirate weather - https://pirateweather.net/en/latest/