name: Open-Meteo FinOps Framework
description: >-
  Financial operations guidance for teams consuming Open-Meteo APIs. Because
  Open-Meteo uses flat-rate monthly subscriptions with no per-call overage
  charges, cost management focuses on right-sizing the subscription tier to
  actual monthly call volume rather than optimizing per-request spend. Teams
  self-hosting the open-source stack replace subscription spend with
  infrastructure costs covered separately.
specificationVersion: '1.0'
framework: FinOps Framework
focusVersion: '1.0'

costModel:
  type: flat-rate-subscription
  currency: USD
  billingCycle: monthly
  overagePolicy: none
  description: >-
    All paid plans charge a fixed monthly fee regardless of call volume
    within the included budget. There are no per-API-call charges and no
    surprise overage fees. Unused calls do not roll over to the next month.

tiers:
  - name: Free (Non-Commercial)
    monthlyCost: 0.00
    includedCalls: 300000
    costPerCall: 0.00
    commercialUse: false

  - name: API Standard
    monthlyCost: 29.00
    includedCalls: 1000000
    effectiveCostPerCall: 0.000029
    commercialUse: true

  - name: API Professional
    monthlyCost: 99.00
    includedCalls: 5000000
    effectiveCostPerCall: 0.0000198
    commercialUse: true

  - name: API Enterprise
    monthlyCost: custom
    includedCalls: 50000000
    effectiveCostPerCall: negotiated
    commercialUse: true

optimization:
  strategies:
    - name: Match tier to actual call volume
      description: >-
        Monitor monthly call counts via your customer portal. Upgrade only
        when actual usage consistently approaches or exceeds 80% of the
        included budget. Downgrade during off-peak seasons if usage drops
        well below the included budget for two or more consecutive months.
      impact: high
      effort: low

    - name: Cache API responses client-side
      description: >-
        Weather forecasts update every 1–6 hours depending on model. Cache
        responses in your application or CDN layer for at least the model
        update interval (typically 1 hour for forecast endpoints) to avoid
        redundant calls for the same coordinates and variables.
      impact: high
      effort: medium

    - name: Request only required variables
      description: >-
        Each API call can return dozens of weather variables. Specify only
        the hourly, daily, and current variables your application actually
        uses. Smaller payloads reduce bandwidth and processing time even
        though they count as the same number of API calls.
      impact: medium
      effort: low

    - name: Batch multi-location queries efficiently
      description: >-
        Each call to the forecast endpoint resolves one latitude/longitude
        coordinate. For applications covering many locations, group requests
        and schedule them off-peak to avoid burst rate-limit violations on
        the free tier and to spread load on paid dedicated servers.
      impact: medium
      effort: medium

    - name: Evaluate self-hosting for very large volumes
      description: >-
        The Open-Meteo server is AGPLv3 open-source and can be deployed on
        your own cloud infrastructure using the official Docker containers.
        At very high call volumes (hundreds of millions per month) the cloud
        infrastructure cost of self-hosting may be lower than Enterprise
        subscription pricing.
      impact: high
      effort: high
      reference: https://github.com/open-meteo/open-meteo

    - name: Use the right API for the right time range
      description: >-
        The forecast endpoint serves up to 16 days ahead. For historical
        queries (past weather), use the dedicated Historical Weather API
        (archive-api endpoint) rather than using past_days on the forecast
        endpoint, which has different data lineage and model availability.
        Correct endpoint use avoids unnecessary retries and data mismatches.
      impact: low
      effort: low

allocation:
  dimensions:
    - name: Application
      description: Tag API key usage by application or product line when
        managing multiple commercial workloads under one account.
    - name: Environment
      description: Use separate API keys for production and development or
        staging environments to track call consumption per environment.
    - name: API Type
      description: Different base URLs (api, archive-api, marine-api, etc.)
        allow attribution of call volume to specific weather product lines.

governance:
  policies:
    - name: Non-commercial compliance check
      description: >-
        Any product generating revenue (subscriptions, advertising, paid
        services, commercial research) must use a paid plan. Using the free
        tier for commercial workloads violates the terms of service and may
        result in account blocking.
      severity: critical
      reference: https://open-meteo.com/en/terms

    - name: API key security
      description: >-
        Commercial API keys should be stored in secrets management systems
        (e.g., environment variables, vault). Do not embed keys in
        client-side JavaScript or public repositories.
      severity: high

    - name: Budget threshold alerting
      description: >-
        Configure alerts at 70% and 90% of monthly included call budget via
        the Open-Meteo customer portal. This provides time to upgrade the
        plan before the budget is exhausted mid-month.
      severity: medium

references:
  - name: Pricing Page
    url: https://open-meteo.com/en/pricing
  - name: Terms of Service
    url: https://open-meteo.com/en/terms
  - name: GitHub (Self-Hosting)
    url: https://github.com/open-meteo/open-meteo
  - name: Commercial API Announcement
    url: https://openmeteo.substack.com/p/api-subscriptions-for-commercial