Rain Viewer Weather Radar API

Free public weather radar API for personal, educational, and small-scale community use. Access tile pyramids from 1200+ radars worldwide across 150+ countries, refreshed every 5 minutes — the same data that powers our iOS, Android, and web apps.

This API is available for personal and educational use only.

Terms of Use

Available APIs

Additional Information

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Is the Rain Viewer API completely free to use, even for production projects?

    Yes — the public Weather Maps API is free for personal, educational, and small-scale community use. There's no fee or paid tier currently, but the free service comes without SLA guarantees and is not intended for high-volume commercial applications.

  • Do I need to register or obtain an API key to access Rain Viewer endpoints?

    No registration or API key is required for the free tier. You can fetch the JSON endpoints and tile URLs directly from your application. We recommend caching responses on your side to reduce load and improve your app's reliability.

  • What attribution does Rain Viewer require when I use the API in my application?

    You must display credit such as "Weather data by Rain Viewer" with a link back to rainviewer.com somewhere visible in your app or website. Attribution is mandatory under the free terms of use and helps us continue offering the API at no cost.

  • Can I use the Rain Viewer API commercially, or only for non-commercial projects?

    The free tier targets personal, educational, and small community projects. For high-volume traffic, commercial integration, or any use case where you depend on guaranteed availability, get in touch — bespoke commercial terms are arranged case-by-case.

  • Are there rate limits or guaranteed uptime for the free Rain Viewer API?

    There are no hard rate limits posted, but please cache aggressively and avoid hammering endpoints — abuse may result in your IP being blocked. We don't publish an SLA; the API is provided best-effort. Always include retry logic and graceful degradation in your client.

  • What kind of data can I retrieve through the Rain Viewer API right now?

    The Weather Maps API exposes radar tile URLs, timeline metadata for the past 2 hours plus nowcast frames, and color scheme variants. You can build map overlays, automated weather notifications, embedded radar widgets, and similar applications using only this endpoint.

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