Pirate Weather
- Free allowance
- Free plan: 10,000 API requests a month with a Dark Sky style forecast (currently, minutely, hourly and daily data) and ERA5 historic weather; plans of USD 3 a month for 20,000 and USD 5 a month for 60,000 follow.
- Verdict
- caveatusable, with a named limit or an unprobed read path
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- emailcard unknown, phone unknown
- Binding limit
- request-rate10,000 requests a month on the Free plan; at the quota the API answers HTTP 429
- Evidence
- documented13 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-12-03checked 2026-11-02 (live); stale on 2026-12-03
| Free tier | Free plan: 10,000 API requests a month with a Dark Sky style forecast (currently, minutely, hourly and daily data) and ERA5 historic weather; plans of USD 3 a month for 20,000 and USD 5 a month for 60,000 follow. unit requests; metered on request-count; The monthly quota is the only published limit; at it the API answers HTTP 429, and Ratelimit-Limit, Ratelimit-Remaining and Ratelimit-Reset headers report the month's count. The plans page says historic data reach back to 1980 and the home page says 1940. Bulk path: none documented. The public-apis list marks the service as keyless, but a call with no valid key answered HTTP 401. |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Limits |
|
| Binding | request-rate The 10,000 a month quota (about 0.2 a minute) is the only published limit. |
| Identity | email An account on the Apiable portal is created and the free plan subscribed to before a key works, and the key can take up to 20 minutes to go live; the sign-up form is rendered by script, so its fields (email, password, card, phone) are unverified, and the plans page prices the Free plan at zero. |
| Egress | not applicable |
| Retention | not applicable: the unit is a request |
| Interface | rest REST over HTTPS at api.pirateweather.net/forecast/[key]/[lat],[lon] in the Dark Sky style, with a time argument for historic requests; a hosted MCP server at mcp.pirateweather.net uses the same key endpoint: https://api.pirateweather.net/forecast/[apikey]/[latitude],[longitude] |
| Tooling | any HTTP client; Python and other libraries and a Home Assistant integration exist. Last resort: the user installs and runs the open-source server on a rented or free machine. |
| Composes with | A keyed Dark Sky replacement built on NOAA and ECMWF model data, with ERA5 history through the same call. |
| Reliability | A four hour production outage occurred on 2025-12-24; the key needs up to 20 minutes to propagate after subscribing. |
| Notes | Bulk path: none documented. Open-source code exists; running it is the last resort after the hosted plans. |
| Evidence note | documented Plan and quota are read from first-party pages; a call with a dummy key answered HTTP 401, so a keyed call was not exercised and the sign-up form was not readable. |
| Parsed numbers |
|
Evidence 13
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-11-02 | pirate-weather.apiable.io/products/weatherdata/plans | the Free plan allows 10,000 requests a month |
| 2026-11-02 | pirate-weather.apiable.io/products/weatherdata/plans | the Free plan is priced at zero |
| 2026-11-02 | pirate-weather.apiable.io/products/weatherdata/plans | the USD 3 plan allows 20,000 calls a month |
| 2026-11-02 | pirate-weather.apiable.io/products/weatherdata/plans | the USD 5 plan allows 60,000 calls a month |
| 2026-11-02 | pirate-weather.apiable.io/products/weatherdata/plans | the plan table lists ERA5 historic weather back to 1980 |
| 2026-11-02 | pirateweather.net/ | the home page says ERA5 from 1940 |
| 2026-11-02 | pirateweather.net/ | the code is open source and can be run locally |
| 2026-11-02 | docs.pirateweather.net/en/latest/API/ | an account is created and the plan subscribed to before a key works |
| 2026-11-02 | docs.pirateweather.net/en/latest/API/alerts-flags-errors/ | 429 answers at the monthly quota |
| 2026-11-02 | docs.pirateweather.net/en/latest/Blog/Infrastructure2026/ | a four hour production outage on 2025-12-24 |
| 2026-11-02 | probe: https://api.pirateweather.net/forecast/0/45.42,-75.69 | a call with a dummy key answered 401, so a key is required |
| 2026-11-02 | probe: https://api.pirateweather.net/forecast/0/45.42,-75.69 | the call answered HTTP 401 |
| 2026-11-02 | raw.githubusercontent.com/public-apis/public-apis/master/REA | public-apis marks Pirate Weather as needing no auth, which the 401 contradicts |
Unknown values 2
- egress terms: the field does not apply to this kind of offer
- per object cap stated: the field does not apply to this kind of offer