name: NOAA API FinOps
description: >-
  NOAA APIs are federally funded public services with no direct cost to API
  consumers. All costs are borne by the US federal government through NOAA's
  annual appropriations. From a FinOps perspective, consumers have zero direct
  spend on API access but should account for indirect costs such as
  infrastructure, engineering, and data egress within their own environments.
specificationVersion: '1.0'
framework: FinOps Framework FOCUS-aligned
currency: USD
costModel:
  type: Free Government Service
  directCost: 0.00
  description: >-
    No subscription fees, request charges, or data transfer costs are levied
    on API consumers. NOAA data is in the public domain and free for any use.
spend:
  directAPISpend:
    amount: 0.00
    currency: USD
    description: No cost to API consumers for any NOAA API service
  indirectCosts:
    - category: Infrastructure
      description: >-
        Consumer infrastructure costs for hosting applications that use
        NOAA data (servers, containers, cloud compute)
      estimationMethod: Track via cloud provider billing tags on NOAA-dependent workloads
    - category: Engineering
      description: >-
        Development and maintenance effort for integrations with NOAA APIs,
        handling versioning changes and data format updates
      estimationMethod: Track engineering hours attributed to NOAA API integration
    - category: Data Storage
      description: >-
        Costs for storing cached NOAA data locally to reduce repeated API calls
        and comply with recommended caching practices
      estimationMethod: Storage cost per GB-month in chosen cloud/on-premise environment
    - category: Data Egress
      description: >-
        Cloud data transfer costs when NOAA data is fetched into cloud workloads
        from the public internet endpoints
      estimationMethod: Monitor cloud provider data-in transfer costs for NOAA API traffic
optimization:
  recommendations:
    - name: Use Cache Endpoints for Bulk Data
      description: >-
        For Aviation Weather and NWS data, use pre-compiled cache files
        at published cache endpoints instead of repeated real-time API calls.
        This reduces load on NOAA infrastructure and avoids rate limit blocks.
      savingsType: Rate limit avoidance, reduced engineering retry logic
    - name: Implement Response Caching
      description: >-
        Cache API responses locally for data that does not change frequently
        (zone information, office metadata, station lists). NWS API responses
        include cache-friendly headers.
      savingsType: Reduced API call volume, lower egress costs
    - name: Request Only Needed Fields
      description: >-
        Use available query parameters to filter responses to only the data
        fields and time ranges needed. This reduces payload size and processing costs.
      savingsType: Lower data transfer and processing costs
    - name: Register Multiple CDO Tokens for High Volume
      description: >-
        The CDO API allows free token registration. For workloads approaching
        the 10,000 requests/day limit, registering additional tokens with
        different email addresses and load-balancing requests can increase
        effective throughput at zero cost.
      savingsType: Increased throughput within free tier
tags:
  - Government
  - Free Tier
  - Open Data
  - Zero Direct Cost
  - Public Domain