Visual Crossing API
Overview
Visual Crossing offers comprehensive historical weather data, current conditions, and forecasts for any location worldwide, making it particularly valuable for data analysis and building weather-driven insights. It supports queries by city name, address, or coordinates and returns data in JSON or CSV format. Beginners appreciate its clear documentation and a free tier that allows up to 1,000 records per day without a credit card.
Beginner Tip
Sign up at visualcrossing.com for a free API key. The timeline endpoint is the most versatile — you can request historical data, forecasts, or both by changing the date range in the URL.
Available Data
The kind of data this API exposes, based on its documentation. We could not call the endpoint to confirm the exact field names.
Example Response
Illustrative shape only — we were not able to call this endpoint (it requires credentials or exposes no public sample URL), so the fields below show the kind of data this API returns rather than a recorded response.
{
"location": "Tokyo",
"temperature": {
"current": 22,
"feels_like": 24,
"min": 18,
"max": 26
},
"condition": "Partly Cloudy",
"humidity": 65,
"wind": {
"speed": 12,
"direction": "NE"
},
"forecast": [
{
"date": "2025-01-16",
"high": 25,
"low": 17,
"condition": "Sunny"
}
]
} Field Reference
days Array of daily weather objects covering the requested date range days[].datetime Date string in YYYY-MM-DD format for each day days[].tempmax Maximum temperature for the day in the requested unit group days[].tempmin Minimum temperature for the day days[].precip Total precipitation amount in millimeters (or inches for US units) days[].conditions Human-readable summary of weather conditions such as "Partially cloudy" or "Rain, Overcast" Implementation Example
Calls a real endpoint of this API. Replace any placeholder credentials with your own key.
// Get weather timeline for a location
const url = "https://weather.visualcrossing.com/VisualCrossingWebServices/rest/services/timeline/London,UK?key=YOUR_API_KEY";
const response = await fetch(url);
if (!response.ok) throw new Error(`Request failed: ${response.status}`);
const data = await response.json();
console.log(`Location: ${data.resolvedAddress}`);
console.log(`Timezone: ${data.timezone}`);
console.log(`Current Conditions: ${data.currentConditions.temp}°F, ${data.currentConditions.conditions}`);
console.log(`Days in forecast: ${data.days.length}`);
data.days.slice(0, 3).forEach(day => {
console.log(`${day.datetime}: ${day.tempmax}°F / ${day.tempmin}°F - ${day.conditions}`);
}); What Can You Build?
Note: These code examples are AI-generated and unverified. Always refer to the official API documentation for accurate usage.
Common Errors & Troubleshooting
Generated guidance based on this API's documentation, not observed by us. Treat it as a starting point and check against the provider's own error reference.
Metadata Score Breakdown
Estimated from metadata — endpoint not independently tested
Metadata estimate · endpoint not independently tested
Technical Specifications
Related Tags
Alternatives to Visual Crossing
Technical alternatives for different use cases.
Strong historical weather data going back decades
Real-time weather alerts and push notifications
Historical weather analysis and climate research
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