How can I replace the Dark Sky API?

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Quick Start

If you are ready to give Visual Crossing Weather a try right away, our Timeline Weather API will allow you to quickly and easily replace your existing Dark Sky Time Machine API. Also our Pay-as-you-go pricing model matches Dark Sky’s “dead simple” pricing as well. You even get 1000 results per day for free, just like Dark Sky.

To quickly get started, please see our Step by Step Dark Sky API Conversion Guide..

Sign up now and get started immediately with an API and pricing that you already know.

Background

You have already heard that Apple is buying Dark Sky, abandoning the users of their popular weather API. They have already stopped accepting new API users and will turn off existing API customers shortly. Since you only have a short time to convert your weather applications and websites, you won’t want to delay in choosing and implementing a replacement weather API.

How to choose a replacement weather API

There are various considerations when choosing a replacement for the Dark Sky weather API. Below are some of the most important questions that you should ask yourself before making a decision.

Essential functionality

Without these the weather API won’t work for you

  • Does the weather API cover the types of queries that you need? Some key types of queries include long-range forecast, decades of history data, and climate summaries.
  • Does the weather API cover the geographic areas and time range that you need? You should not only consider the stated coverage areas but also the density of weather reporting stations in areas important to you.
  • Does the weather API provide data in time ranges and increments that are detailed enough for your needs? In some cases, daily or hourly data is sufficient, but in other cases sub-hourly data and raw station reports are necessary.
  • Does the weather service offer free trials, licensing tiers, and pricing levels that are compatible with your project’s needs? There is no use considering an API where the features that you need are in a pricing tier that you can’t afford.

Important functionality

Having these will help you use the API more efficiently and effectively

  • Does the weather service have an API that mirrors that Dark Sky Time Machine API that you already use?
  • Can you get started using the service with a large number of free daily queries for free?
  • Does the weather API allow you to query based on simple locations such as addresses, cities, and ZIP Codes? Or do you need to manually look up cryptic weather station IDs or latitude and longitude values for every location before querying the weather?
  • Does the weather API support flexible output formats to allow support for various data consumers and container? Or must you manually convert from a single output format?

Valuable additional features

These will help you get up and running quickly and make better use of weather data

  • Does the weather data service provide a web-base query interface to allow you to easily download sample data and construct your weather queries visually?
  • Are code examples and tutorials available using the weather API in many different languages and weather data use cases?
  • Does the weather API provide a specific Dark Sky migration tutorial that shows how to easily migrate from the Dark Sky API?

Visual Crossing Weather makes the transition easy

Visual Crossing Weather is the perfect alternative to the Dark Sky API. We not only have one of the best weather API solutions in the industry, but we can help make sure that you can migrate your application to our API before Dark Sky turns off its API.

Here are some key reasons why Visual Crossing Weather is your ideal Dark Sky API replacement.

  • A full 15-day weather forecast at every plan level, including our Free tier.
  • Worldwide historical weather data going back more than 50 years available at every plan level.
  • A database over 80,000 weather reporting stations with full coverage around the globe.
  • Full climate data and statistical weather forecasts including annual, monthly, and weekly summaries.
  • Forecast data is available at both the daily and hourly level and historical weather data is available at those levels as well as the sub-hourly level and as raw weather station reports.
  • Lookup weather using an address, city, or ZIP code directly in a single API call.  No need for separate geocoding or weather station ID lookup.
  • Get forecast or historical weather data for multiple locations in a single API call.
  • Sample code and tutorials for most programming languages including JavaScript, Java, Python, HTML, and R.
  • Examples and tutorials for use in popular business tools such as SAP, Microsoft Excel, Power BI, Tableau, Qlik, and WordPress.
  • Multiple, industry-standard output formats including JSON, CSV, XLSX, and OData.
  • Web-based graphical weather data query builder for testing queries and downloading data .
  • Beyond Pay-as-you-go, monthly Plans include unlimited API calls and enterprise options, and paid pricing starts at $35.
  • Detailed migration documentation for Dark Sky users.

Drop us a note or send us an email, and we’ll not only show you how to migrate from the Dark Sky API to the Visual Crossing Weather API quickly and easily, we’ll also give you a discount to help sooth the transition pain.

2 thoughts on “How can I replace the Dark Sky API?”

  1. Denny

    Looking for a replacement for the Dark Sky API. I am mostly in need of cities and airports outside of the U.S. I currently use the api.weather.gov for U.S. cities. Specifically looking for plain English weather forecasts such as "Partly cloudy throughout the day. The chance of precipitation is 34%." This is currently provided by Dark Sky. Do you provide something like this.

    1. Visual Crossing

      Denny,

      We’d be glad to help you replace Dark Sky either for your international queries only or for use in your entire project. (I know that managing multiple APIs and harmonizing the output among them can be a major pain.) We do have a simple plain text option right now in the Conditions field, and we are in the process of adding an enhanced version to be more friendly for those migrating from Dark Sky. If you have not already done so, please sign up for a free trial. (https://www.visualcrossing.com/weather-data) This will allow you to see our functionality in action. Then, if you have any questions or need additional information, please let us know via support@visualcrossing.com. We’ll be happy to help you get the weather data that you need.

      Visual Crossing
      info@visualcrossing.com

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