NOAA National Weather Service

Official US government weather API providing forecasts, alerts, and observations for US locations. No key required.

Status
🟢 Online · 36 ms

30-day uptime
100%

Free tier
Unlimited (US only), no key, no credit card

Auth
No key required

Last 30 days

Free alternatives (live ranking)

7Timer! — 🟢 Online · Unlimited, no key, no credit card
Open-Meteo Air Quality — 🟢 Online · 10,000 calls/day, no key, no credit card
Bright Sky (DWD) — 🟢 Online · Unlimited, no key, no credit card

Compare NOAA National Weather Service with…

NOAA National Weather Service vs 7Timer! — Unlimited, no key, no credit card
NOAA National Weather Service vs Open-Meteo Air Quality — 10,000 calls/day, no key, no credit card
NOAA National Weather Service vs Bright Sky (DWD) — Unlimited, no key, no credit card

Paid alternatives

Tomorrow.io — from $19/mo

Official docs ↗

Frequently Asked Questions

Does NOAA National Weather Service require an API key?

No, NOAA National Weather Service is freely accessible without registration or an API key.

What is NOAA National Weather Service's free tier?

Unlimited (US only), no key, no credit card

Is NOAA National Weather Service currently online?

We check NOAA National Weather Service every hour. The current status is shown at the top of this page. You can also see the 30-day uptime history in the chart above.

Implementation notes

When to use NOAA National Weather Service

NOAA's National Weather Service API is the definitive source for US weather data — forecasts, hourly conditions, active alerts, and radar station observations all from the official government source. If your app serves US users, this is the most authoritative option and has no rate limits.

Common pitfalls

NOAA's API requires a two-step lookup for forecasts. First call `/points/{lat},{lon}` to get a grid point and forecast URL specific to that location; then call the returned forecast URL. The indirection is documented but confuses first-time users who expect a direct lat/lon-to-forecast query.
The grid point pre-computation step introduces a 2-5 second lag for coordinates that have never been queried before. Subsequent calls to the same point are fast (under 500ms), but cold-start queries are noticeably slow.
NOAA only covers the continental US, Alaska, Hawaii, US territories, and some adjacent ocean areas. Requests for coordinates outside these areas return a 404 with a 'Point not found' message, not a geographic boundary error.
Alert data from `/alerts/active` returns GeoJSON by default. The `status` field can be `Actual`, `Test`, `Exercise`, or `Draft` — filter to `Actual` to avoid surfacing test alerts in production.

Quick start (bash)

# Two-step: get grid, then forecast
GRID=$(curl -s "https://api.weather.gov/points/39.74,-97.09" | python3 -c "import sys,json; d=json.load(sys.stdin); print(d['properties']['forecast'])")
curl -s "$GRID" | python3 -c "import sys,json; d=json.load(sys.stdin); [print(p['name'],'-',p['detailedForecast'][:80]) for p in d['properties']['periods'][:3]]"

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