Definitive guide to Weather integrations 🌩

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There are a bunch of weather integrations to choose from and everyone you’ll ask will have a different opinion about which one to choose. Let’s break down the options where they shine, where they fall short and help YOU choose the perfect fit for your smart home.

So, grab your metaphorical raincoats (or sunscreen, depending on the forecast) and let’s dive in! :sunglasses:

Update 05/07/2024: Bureau of Meteorology added. Thanks @Chykan

Table Of Contents

Why this guide

:cook: Feeling overwhelmed by all the weather integrations? You’re not alone! Inspired by the The Home Assistant Cookbook - Index, I wanted to dive a bit deeper and create a valuable resource to help others.

:man_beard: Beared Thinker made a nice video :film_strip: which is a good introduction to this guide.

:face_with_monocle: While the original reason for this guide was a change to OpenWeatherMap, let’s focus on the bright side of all the fantastic integrations available in the world of Home Assistant. After all, choice is what makes Home Assistant so great!

:memo: This guide is a community effort, so feel free to edit and contribute to keep it up-to-date. This first post can be edited by everyone, so if you spot a mistake or see something is missing, take those 2 minutes to edit the guide.

Introduction

The original list contains the most popular core weather integrations which contain the weather entity providing current weather and weather forecast using public data services. HACS integrations are being added over time which you can help with. Just hit that edit button at the top and add your favorite weather integration.

:index_pointing_at_the_viewer: There are several integrations which I was unable to test. If you got one of them working, please share the results.

Integration list

The following integrations will be covered in this guide:

Core Signup Usage Coverage Forecast Distinguishing factor
AccuWeather Email 4.6% Global 5 days Lots of current and forecasted data (air quality, allergies, sun/solar, etc.)
AEMET OpenData Email <1% ES 6 days, 72 hours Well documented.
BuienRadar None 2.6% NL / BE 5 days Detailed precipitation forecast, history and radar
Environment Canada None <1% CA ? Gives error. Unable to test
Meteorologisk None 78.9% Global 6 days, 24 hours HA Default integration. Lean and Clean.
Météo-France None 1.8% FR 5 days, 24 hours Documentation might be outdated
National Weather Service (NWS) None 1.7% US 7 days, 168 hours Gives error. Unable to test.
OpenWeatherMap Creditcard 7% Global 5 days, 24 hours Requires credit card
Open-Meteo None 1.2% Global 7 days, 168 hours Extensive forecasts for basic weather info.
Tomorrow.io Email 1% Global 6 days, 24 hours Current air quality, allergies, solar data. Basic forecast for extensive weather info.
HACS
Astro Weather None 65 :star: Global Stargazing condition and forecast
Bureau of Meteorology None 171 :star: AUS :kangaroo: 8 days, 72 hours Closest station. Detailed UV, and rain forecast. Weather alert.
Deutscher Wetterdienst None 149 :star: DE Gives error. Unable to test.
KNMI Email 92 :star: NL 5 days, 24 hours KNMI data provided through weerlive.nl
IRM KMI None 29 :star: NL / BE 7 days, 48 hours Allergies, Radar, Weather alert.
PirateWeather Email 327 :star: Global 8 days, 168 hours Extensive forecasts extensive weather info.

Column description:

  • Signup: This column states which data you need to give up in order to use the integration. Integrations which do not require anything can be added without the need for an API key.
  • Usage: This column describes the popularity of the integration. Quality used to be included as well, but since very few integration have a quality score it doesn’t say much.
  • Forecast: The number of days and hours provided by for the daily and hourly forecast.

Refresh interval: Most integrations seems to have a refresh interval of 30 minutes. I haven’t found any distinguishing factors here as it might require insight in the code.
Accuracy: Some services choose the closest weather station while others calculate an average based on several nearby weather stations. Note that taking the average of several weather integration might be less accurate.

The following integrations are not included:

  • Ambient Weather is not included because it require a physical device.
  • Wunderground is not included because it require a physical device.

Attributes

To keep the tables compact and readable, attribute names need to be abbreviated and sometimes combines. The attributes are those defined to be part of the weather entity in Home Assistant. Basic attributes are shown on the weather entity while extra attributes are available in YAML.

abbreviation attribute example
Standard
Con Condition Partly cloudy
Temp Current temperature or forecasted high 18.3 °C
Low Forecasted low temperature 9.4 °C
App Apparent temperature / feels-like temperature 21.1 °C
Dew Dew point 6.0 °C
Hum Humidity 76 %
Rain Precipitation 1.5 mm
Pres Pressure 1,016 hPa
Wind Wind speed / bearing 2.3 km/h (NNW)
Gust Gust wind speed / bearing 5.7 km/h (NNW)
Vis Visibility 24.1 km
Cld Cloud coverage 15 %
O3 Ozone 403.3 ppm
UV UV Index 3
Nonstandard
Alert Weather alert Code yellow
Rain% Precipitation chance 17%
Text Detailed textual description Partly cloudy with moderate chance of rain

Note: One might notice that precipitation chance is a non-standard attribute. Several integrations offer this data, but it is not a in home assistant’s weather specification. Most people multiply the precipitation chance with the precipitation amount. This might or might not give the right results


Current weather

The weather entity consists of the current weather information captured in the attributes and the daily and optionally hourly forecast.

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The weather entity is most commonly used with the weather forecast card or more advanced cards from HACS to display the current and forecasted weather on a dashboard.
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Current weather attributes

The table below shows the current weather attribute provided by the weather entity.

Core Daily Hourly Con Temp App Dew Hum Rain Pres Wind Gust Vis Cld O3 UV Other
AccuWeather 5 - X X X X X X X X X X X
BuienRadar 5 X X X X X X
Meteorologisk 6 24 X X X X X X
Météo-France 5 24 X X X X X
NWS
OpenWeatherMap 5 24 X X X X X X X X
Open-Meteo 7 168 X X X
Tomorrow. io 6 24 X X X X X
HACS
AstroWeather 59 X X X X X X X X
Bureau of Meteorology 8 72 X X X X X X X X X X
IRM KMI 7 48 X X X X
KNMI 5 24 X X X X X X X X
PirateWeather 8 168 X X X X X X X X X

Rain: One might notice that rain is not part of the current weather data. This is not by accident since rain is very localized and commonly measured on a daily or hourly basis. Therefore it is part of the forecast data in home assistant.

Weather forecast

For more advanced stuff like calculating the amount of water to give your garden the weather.get_forecasts service is useful.

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Every integration returns a different set of attributes for hourly and daily forecast.
If you find any mistakes in the table below, please correct them carefully.

Forecast attributes

Attributes can be provided in either the daily and/or hourly forecast. The twice daily forecast is not included since only few integrations use it.

D: Daily
H: Hourly

Core Daily Hourly Con Temp Low App Hum Wind Gust Rain Rain% Pres Cld Dew UV
AccuWeather 5 - D D D D D D D D D D
BuienRadar 5 D D D D D
Meteorologisk 6 24 DH DH D DH DH D DH
Météo-France 5 DH DH D DH H D DH
NWS
OpenWeatherMap 5 24 DH DH D DH DH DH DH DH DH DH DH DH
Open-Meteo 7 168 DH DH D D DH
Tomorrow. io 6 24 DH DH D DH DH DH DH DH
HACS
AstroWeather 0 59 H H H H H H
Bureau of Meteorology 8 72 DH DH D H DH H H DH D H H
IRM KMI 7 24 DH DH D DH D DH H
KNMI 5 48 DH DH D DH H D
PirateWeather 8 168 DH DH D H DH DH DH DH DH H DH H H

It’s easy to see why OpenWeatherMap is popular, but since it requires a credit card, I strongly encourage you to look for an alternative.

Extra entities

Some integrations have additional entities such as air quality, allergies information, or sun shine. These can be convenient to use in an automation.
The disadvantage of entities is that the number of entities to provide forecast information can grow rapidly which some users might find messy.
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Integration Entities Description
AccuWeather 129 Today + 4 day forecast with separate day and night entities. Detailed weather, sun/solar, allergies and air quality
BuienRadar 108 Radar and 5 day forecast for weather and precipitation
Meteorologisk 1 No extra entities
Météo-France 11 Daily precipitation and basic weather
NWS
OpenWeatherMap 28 Basic weather forecast
Open-Meteo 1 No extra entities
Tomorrow. io 28 Current details about weather, solar and allergies
HACS
AstroWeather 58 Astronomical data and details for clouds, visibility and weather conditions
Bureau of Meteorology 163 7 Days detailed UV and rain Forecast, short and extended texts, weather icon, fire hazard and weather alarm
IRM KMI 11 Radar, Allergies and Weather alarm
KNMI 23 Weather warning and a few useful entities for weather and rain
PirateWeather 1 No extra entities

It’s too much to add all the details to a table. If you spot something which might be interesting to you, go ahead and try it out for yourself.

Conclusion

It’s often not about which integration has the most information, but which integration best fit your needs (including privacy). I hope this overview gives you all the information you need to make the best choice for your situation.

That said, these are my personal winners:

Best for beginners:

  • Meteorologisk is the default weather integration and an excellent choice for basis weather information and forecast. It’s good starting point.
  • Open-Meteo provides long term forecast for both hourly and daily. Excellent for a basic forecast on your dashboard.

Best weather forecast:

  • PirateWeather from HACS has the most extensive weather forecast.

Best extras:

  • AccuWeather and Tomorrow. io provide a lot of extra entities about sun/solar forecast, allergy data, and air quality.

Community favorite:

  • National weather service are popular because they feel familiar and trustworthy and offer additional entities which match the needs for the location. BuienRadar for example gives excellent rain forecasts for the wet Netherlands. Look for your favorite weather service in Core and HACS.

Honorable mentions:

  • Astroweather provides outstanding details for stargazing and other outdoor activities.

If this guide was useful to you, leave a :heart:

117 Likes
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Can you add pirate weather?

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Yes, and so can you :wink:

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Excellent post, thank you! Switched to accuweather.

Lost hourly predictions but it’s not like the HA dash is my primary spot to check the weather, it’s just there to make my dashboard look pretty.

1 Like
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The most important data for weather services is the amount of measuring points in your local area.
The closest measuring point can be several hundreds kilometers away from your current position, if it is a weather service that do not focus on your area.
A local weather service might be using an average of some measuring points, but if it has many measuring points, then they are often way better than the closest one in the weather service with few measuring points.
In general a local weather service will always have more measuring points than global or non-local ones.
The measuring points are also what really affect the accuracy of the forecasts, because that is what is predictions are based upon.

3 Likes
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I’ve tested the new “billing plan” from Openweathermap for a couple of days now. The first 1000 api calls per day are free. In the last couple of days I had a maximum of 151 calls per day, so I don’t think it’s a big issue that you have to register with your credit card now. I personally do not care about using my credit card. And
 people do have to get paid to keep services like this alive.

5 Likes
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You can also limit your calls so you never exceeed the 1,000 free calls per day.

1 Like
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And, as I posted on another thread, you can always get a pre-paid Visa card to use for these types of services if you are concerned about hacking.

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I use privacy.com to generate virtual credit cards. It’s free plus I can set spending limits as well as lock the card to a specific store.

1 Like
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This is a great resource. I hope it continues to grow with updated info. I have been an OWM user and continue to be with v.3 of the API. But I also tested Meteorologisk since it’s free and seems like it has the lions share of the users.

I found it interesting, looking at the current weather but also at the 5 day forecast using the weather card, that they were quite different. Temperatures differed slightly, that is understandable based on how they aggregate data. But as you can see OWM shows rain every day for the next 4 days, and Meteorologisk showed only cloudy. It’s the weather for Toronto, biggest Canadian city, so it surprised me.

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Hm
US only
 :cry:

2 Likes
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I still prefer pre-paid anyway because while that service is cool, I presume you have to load the one-time use card somewhere and unless its PayPal then that just means you shifted your card data from one provider to another and are still at risk. Then again, it’s against PCI compliance to store cards so technically nobody but the merchant should have it but that isn’t guaranteed.

1 Like
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Since there are plenty of topics on privacy and OpenWeatherMap, I’d like to focus this discussion on weather integration and avoid OpenWeatherMap’s subscription from this point forth.

I’ll update the guide shortly

2 Likes
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I added PirateWeather.
It scores top marks for current weather and forecasts.

3 Likes
17

Thank for posting this.

Just switched to accuweather; have deleted openweathermap.

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Well done! :bowing_man:

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Excellent Resource! Keep adding to it!

1 Like
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Thanks for this guide!
Did anyone else noticed that PirateWeather shows absolute air pressure, not relative one?
Besides
it doesn’t seem to be very accurate, since it shows cloudy here, while other two (built-in and accuweather) show sunny (which it is) and correct relative air pressure. It seems that pirate doesn’t take into account HA’s altitude setting

I prefer my local weather institute, but sadly i can only use it as web page, not as “weather” entity.

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As a user of OpenWeatherMap, i can say with certainty that it does not require a credit card see the free tier here on their web page. You can get an api key for free with just an email. While the free tier is limited for my use case it provides more than enough detail and granularity. Also your table does not seem to be accurate, even OpenWeatherMaps free tier does provide access to current weather humidity, rain, and many other things.

You seem to be trying to steer people away from it rather than comparing its different unpaid and paid tiers to other services and their tiers. As a rule i generally would only compare free products with free products and paid products with other paid products.

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@AJediIAm Thank you for the work you put in to this guide. I have been using both AccuWeather and OpenWeatherMap since I started my HA journey as they both have their benefits.

One thing that I think you left out from your guide is support for other languages.
I found that I can get the weather condition from OpenWeatherMap in my native language (Swedish) so that I can use that in my TTS morning weather announcement.

Just a thought, and thanks again for the guide!