Weather & Geospatial holds 483 providers publishing 2,253 APIs — weather, mapping, geocoding, and the satellite and location data feeding everything from logistics to insurance.
It is the vertical where the smallest surfaces score highest, and where the most interesting entries are public institutions.
The functional bands
| Band | Providers |
|---|---|
| Weather data | OpenWeatherMap (14 APIs, 72.3), Tomorrow.io (10, 70.2), WeatherAPI (7, 62.3), OpenUV (3, 62.9) |
| Mapping and geocoding | Google Maps Platform (41, 66.6), positionstack (3, 67.0), OpenStreetMap (9, 62.0) |
| National mapping agencies | Ordnance Survey (12, 67.2) |
| Places and local data | Yelp (5, 71.0) |
| Earth observation | Google Earth Engine REST (1, 62.7), DroneDeploy (3, 62.8) |
| Infrastructure and built environment | Bentley Systems (87, 69.8) |
| Location as a cloud primitive | Amazon Location Service (1, 67.3) |
| Applied location | Onfleet (9, 68.3) |
Fourteen providers. Nine of them publish fewer than fifteen APIs.
The smallest surfaces in the catalog, scoring well
Amazon Location Service: 1 API, 67.3. Google Earth Engine REST: 1 API, 62.7. positionstack: 3 APIs, 67.0. OpenUV: 3 APIs, 62.9. DroneDeploy: 3 APIs, 62.8.
Five entries in the top fourteen publish three or fewer APIs.
Geospatial questions are naturally atomic. What is the weather at this point. What are the coordinates of this address. What is on the ground at this tile. Each of those is one operation with well-understood inputs and outputs, and there is no useful way to make it bigger.
That is why this vertical is one of the best starting points for anyone trying to understand what a good small API looks like. There is nowhere to hide behind surface area. OpenWeatherMap at 72.3 with 14 APIs is the vertical’s top score, and it earned it on documentation, pricing clarity, and reliability rather than on breadth.
The public institutions hold up
Ordnance Survey at 67.2 — Britain’s national mapping agency — sits above Google Maps Platform at 66.6. OpenStreetMap at 62.0 is a volunteer project scoring within a point of commercial weather vendors.
Both are worth naming because the pattern is rare. In most verticals the public and non-profit entries sit at the bottom, describing themselves poorly and updating rarely. Mapping is different: the data is a public good with a long institutional history, the formats are standardised, and the agencies have been publishing machine-readable geographic data since before “API” was the word for it.
What has shifted recently
- Weather went real-time and hyper-local. Tomorrow.io at 70.2 with 10 APIs sells minute-level, address-level forecasting — a product that only exists because the delivery, insurance, and energy sectors will pay for precision that a regional forecast cannot give.
- Location became a cloud primitive. Amazon Location Service at 1 API collapses geocoding, routing, and maps into a single service billed like storage.
- The consumers arrived from other verticals. Onfleet (68.3) is a last-mile delivery company and Bentley Systems (69.8) is infrastructure engineering. Both are in this cohort because location stopped being a feature and became the substrate.
Where to start
- apis.io/industries/weather-geospatial/ — the full 483
- apis.io/providers/openweathermap/ — 14 APIs and the vertical’s top score
- apis.io/providers/ordnance-survey/ — a national mapping agency outscoring Google Maps
Takeaway
483 providers, 2,253 APIs, and five of the top fourteen publish three APIs or fewer. Geospatial questions are atomic, so this is the one vertical where surface area cannot flatter anybody — and where a national mapping agency and a volunteer project score alongside the commercial platforms.
Browse it at apis.io/industries/weather-geospatial/.