How to create an Open­Weath­er API key

The weather service Open­Weath­er offers a range of special APIs to display weather data and forecasts. We’ll show you how to generate an Open­Weath­er API key for the API you want to integrate.

What is Open­Weath­er?

Open­Weath­er is an online service that provides global weather data and weather forecasts via dedicated ap­plic­a­tion pro­gram­ming in­ter­faces, also known as APIs. Data you can integrate includes worldwide real-time weather data, weather forecasts and weather warnings, as well as his­tor­ic­al weather data for different geo­graph­ic­al regions.

This process sees machine learning combine with an ar­ti­fi­cial neural network. The data processed for the forecasts and analyses includes weather data from airport weather stations, radar stations, weather satel­lites, automated weather stations, as well as data from met­eor­o­lo­gic­al weather services.

What are Open­Weath­er APIs?

There are various APIs to integrate weather data from Open­Weath­er into your app or website. These APIs give you le­git­im­ate access to the in­form­a­tion you want and are based on secure, error-free data transfers. Open­Weath­er provides a wide range of APIs for different types of weather data, depending on your needs.

As standard, both the free and paid Open­Weath­er plan include an API for current weather data as well as 5-day forecasts. Both free APIs include weather data for every region and for over 200,000 cities, data formats like HTML, XML, or JSON, as well as weather info from various pro­fes­sion­al sources. The 5-day forecasts, in turn, are made at 3-hour intervals for each region worldwide.

Depending on your needs, you can choose between the following Open­Weath­er APIs:

One Call API 3.0

The One Call API 3.0 includes 1,000 free API calls per day. If the limit is exceeded, Open­Weath­er will offer you an alternate payment plan or the ‘Pay as you call’ plan with 0.0012 GBP per API call. The following weather data is available, among others:

• Real-time weather data and forecasts for the next hour
• Hourly forecasts up to 48 hours in advance
• Weather forecasts for the next 8 days
• His­tor­ic­al weather data backdated to up to 40 years
• Weather warnings

Close

APIs for pro­fes­sion­al in­teg­ra­tion

Whether you’re in­teg­rat­ing weather data for medium-sized or large projects, Open­Weath­er offers plans for pro­fes­sion­als, spe­cial­ists, and busi­nesses. These include but are not limited to:

• Hourly Forecast 4 days: Up-to-date, real-time weather data + hourly weather forecasts for up to four days + data for up to 96 timestamps + JSON and XML formats
• Daily Forecast 16 days: Global weather forecasts for up to 16 days + JSON and XML + daily updated forecast data
• Climatic Forecast 30 days: Global weather forecasts for up to 30 days + JSON format
• Bulk Download: Downloads of real-time weather data, various weather forecasts, and 7-day archive + sorted by data type and region + CSV and JSON formats
• Global Weather Alerts Push no­ti­fic­a­tions: Includes all weather alerts from national weather agencies + real-time push no­ti­fic­a­tions for all active weather alerts worldwide + no­ti­fic­a­tions include time, location, and de­scrip­tion
• Road Risk API: Specific weather data and weather warnings for selected driving routes + real-time data, forecasts, and his­tor­ic­al weather data for the selected route

Close

You can explore all Open­Weath­er APIs for free and paid plans on the Open­Weath­er API landing page.

How to create an Open­Weath­er API key

To include Open­Weath­er features, you need an API key to access the Open­Weath­er API. An API key guar­an­tees reliable data exchanges depending on the data plan, and gives you au­thor­ised access via au­thor­ised accounts. In addition, Open­Weath­er uses API keys to count the number of API accesses to check whether an access limit is exceeded.

Free Open­Weath­er API keys

To create an API key for a free Open­Weath­er plan like ‘Current Weather’ or ‘5 Days/3 Hours’, follow these steps:

• Step 1: Sign in to Open­Weath­er or create a new account on Open­Weath­er’s re­gis­tra­tion page.
• Step 2: When re­gis­ter­ing for the first time, provide your email address and wait for a con­firm­a­tion email from Open­Weath­er. The email will hold the API key linked to your free plan.

Paid pro­fes­sion­al Open­Weath­er API keys

To take advantage of paid Pro­fes­sion­al or Enterpise API plans, follow these steps:

• Step 1: Sign in to your account or create a new account.
• Step 2: If you want to use a paid plan for selected Open­Weath­er APIs, go to the Open­Weath­er APIs page, choose an API, and click on ‘Subscribe’.
• Step 3: Fill out the invoice form and complete sign up. Make sure to link your plan to your API key for API calls.
• Step 4: Find your server IP for the paid API plan in your con­firm­a­tion email.

How to find Open­Weath­er API keys

If you want to create new API keys or see an overview of already created keys, follow these steps:

1. Sign in to your Open­Weath­er account.
2. In your account dashboard, go to your account name in the top-right corner and click on ‘My API’ in the drop-down menu. Here you’ll find all created API keys with some in­form­a­tion.
3. You can also create a new key under ‘Create key’ and assign it to a project.

What if the API call limit is reached?

API keys let Open­Weath­er count the number of calls through your account. Both free and paid API plans have a maximum call limit. Once you reach the limit for your API calls, you’ll receive an automatic no­ti­fic­a­tion. In it, Open­Weath­er will offer sug­ges­tions for an API al­tern­at­ive with more available calls.

If you don’t respond to the no­ti­fic­a­tion, the API key will be de­ac­tiv­ated. To re­act­iv­ate the API key and account, you’ll need to contact customer service.