Visual Crossing Weather
Historical and forecast weather data API with CSV and JSON output, supporting 40+ years of history and 15-day forecasts.
🔴 Offline · 8317 ms
0%
1,000 records/day, free key, no credit card
API key
Free alternatives (live ranking)
- NOAA National Weather Service — 🟢 Online · Unlimited (US only), no key, no credit card
- Weatherstack — 🟢 Online · 100 calls/month, free key, no credit card
- 7Timer! — 🟢 Online · Unlimited, no key, no credit card
Compare Visual Crossing Weather with…
- Visual Crossing Weather vs NOAA National Weather Service — Unlimited (US only), no key, no credit card
- Visual Crossing Weather vs Weatherstack — 100 calls/month, free key, no credit card
- Visual Crossing Weather vs 7Timer! — Unlimited, no key, no credit card
Paid alternatives
- Visual Crossing Pro — from $35/mo
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Visual Crossing Weather require an API key?
Yes, Visual Crossing Weather requires a free API key. You can sign up via https://www.visualcrossing.com/resources/documentation/weather-api/timeline-weather-api/.
What is Visual Crossing Weather's free tier?
1,000 records/day, free key, no credit card
Is Visual Crossing Weather currently online?
We check Visual Crossing Weather 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 Visual Crossing Weather
Visual Crossing is the best free option for historical weather analysis. Its archive goes back to 1970 for most global locations and returns data in either JSON or CSV — useful for data science workflows where you want to pipe straight into pandas or Excel without parsing JSON.
Common pitfalls
- Visual Crossing counts a 'record' differently from an 'API call'. One call requesting 30 days of daily data returns 30 records and uses 30 of your 1,000 daily free allocation. A 15-day forecast costs 15 records. If you are requesting hourly data, one week costs 168 records (7 days × 24 hours).
- The timeline endpoint accepts both city names and coordinates, but city name resolution sometimes returns a different location than expected for small towns. Use coordinates from a geocoder for precision.
- Sunrise/sunset and moon phase fields are included in the default response at no extra record cost, but UV index and soil temperature require the `elements` parameter to be explicitly listed.
- The free plan restricts data to your account's registration country by IP in some edge cases. If you see 403 errors for foreign locations from a restricted network, test from a different IP.
Quick start (bash)
curl "https://weather.visualcrossing.com/VisualCrossingWebServices/rest/services/timeline/London/2024-01-01/2024-01-07?unitGroup=metric&key=YOUR_KEY&contentType=json" Embed this badge
Add a live status badge to your README, docs, or website.
Markdown
[](https://freeapi.watch/visual-crossing) HTML
<a href="https://freeapi.watch/visual-crossing"><img src="https://freeapi-builder.a10ayassine.workers.dev/badge/visual-crossing.svg" alt="Visual Crossing Weather Status"/></a>