Weather directly affects our lives. For example, snowfall, heavy rain, and high winds significantly impact outdoor activities, such as hiking or camping. Similarly, you can’t plan a trip to the beach in heavy rain or snowfall. However, it isn’t only the general public that is interested in knowing weather conditions. Climate also strongly affects businesses and industry.
A Current Weather API is valuable both for forecasting weather conditions and for exposing historical trends. In addition, the general public and businesses track current and future weather conditions to plan and prepare their activities. Using a current weather API is a great way to source accurate weather data.
To help you wade through the options, we’ve created this article on finding the best Current Weather APIs.
Table of Contents
What is a Current Weather API?
A current weather API is an Application Programming Interface you can use to integrate real-time weather data into your apps and website. Some efficient current weather APIs like Weatherstack also give you historical weather data and accurate weather forecasts. In addition, you can use these APIs to display weather conditions for different usage scenarios.
For example, a hiking app can collect weather forecasting data on different trail locations and display it for users. Similarly, the construction industry can use a current weather API to predict wind speeds, rainfalls, and temperatures and plan accordingly.
Which Current Weather API Should You Use?
The most important factor to consider while choosing a current weather API is data accuracy. It’s because inaccurate data can greatly affect your plans and business activities. Since current weather APIs use different sources to collect data, they have different accuracy. If you’re looking for a highly reliable current weather API, Weathertstack is the best option.
Weatherstack is a current weather API trusted by more than 75,000 companies across the globe, including Microsoft and Ericsson. The API not only provides accurate real-time weather data, you can also use it to obtain historical weather data and accurate weather forecasts. In addition to being highly accurate, Weatherstack is also known for its user-friendliness and reliability.
Which Features Does Weatherstack Current Weather API Offer?
Weatherstack has a wide range of valuable features that are a leading current weather API.
Which Locations Does the Current Weather API Support?
The Weatherstack current weather API covers global current, historical, and weather forecast data – you can use the API to look up weather conditions for millions of cities and towns worldwide. The current weather API also supports 40 spoken languages.
Does the API Provide Real-Time Weather Data?
As a current weather API, Weatherstack provides accurate real-time data for any location of your choice. To get real-time weather data, you need to attach your desired location to the current endpoint of the API. Depending on your subscription, the API also allows you to create a bulk location – you need to pass multiple semicolon-separated locations to the API URL
Below is an example API call for current weather data:
The above API request will yield the following results:
Does the API Offer Historical Data and Weather Forecasts?
You can also use Weatherstack’s current weather API to obtain historical weather data to analyze past events or get accurate weather forecasts.
When it comes to historical data, you can use Weatherstack historical endpoint to get weather data back to 2008. You can also use the historical_date_start and historical_date_end parameters to get historical time-series results. When you request historical weather data, Weatherstack also automatically returns current weather data in the location used for the request.
Below is an example API call for historical weather data:
The above API request will yield the following results:
When it comes to the weather forecast, Weatherstack can provide weather forecast data for up to 14 days into the future. You can also enable hourly data to get hour-by-hour data or define 3,6,12, or 24 hours intervals.
Below is an example API call for weather forecast:
The code above will yield the following results:
Is the API Accurate and Reliable?
The Weatherstack API fetches weather data from large weather stations and providers in key locations worldwide. Because of this, you can trust the API to give you accurate and precise weather data to prepare for different weather conditions. In addition, the Weatherstack current weather API has 99.9% uptime. This makes it highly reliable and consistent. Another great thing about Weatherstack API is that it delivers weather data in milliseconds.
Does the API Provide Astronomy and Lunar Data?
You can use the Weatherstack current weather API to get accurate astronomical data as well. The API returns a total of six different sub-response objects containing astronomic weather details. These include sunrise time, sunset time, moonrise time, moonset time, moon phase (New Moon, Waxing Crescent, First Quarter, etc.), and moon illumination level.
Is the Current Weather API Easy to Use?
Weatherstack API is super easy to use and easy to integrate. The API comes with detailed documentation consisting of a step-by-step process of how to get started and how to use different API features and endpoints. The API’s documentation includes several code examples in popular programming languages.
Which Programming Languages Does the Current Weather API Support?
When it comes to programming languages, Weatherstack supports all major programming languages, including PHP, Python, Nodejs, and jQuery.
Below are some code examples in popular programming languages:
PHP
Python
Nodejs
Is Weatherstack Current Weather API Free to Use?
The Weatherstack current weather API offers several packages to look up weather conditions in any location of your choice. These packages range from free to paid subscription plans. The free package gives you 250 calls per month and supports current weather data.
Weatherstack also offers three paid packages:
- Standard: $9.99 for 50,000 API calls per month, real-time, historical, hour by hour and astronomy data, and a few other useful features
- Professional: $49.99 for 300,000 API calls per month, real-time, historical, hour by hour, 7-day forecast and astronomy data, bulk queries, and many other features
- Business: $99.99 for 1 million API calls per month real-time, historical, hour by hour, 14-day forecast and astronomy data, bulk queries, and many other features
