name: Weather Underground API FinOps
description: >
  Weather Underground's PWS API is free for personal weather station
  contributors, eliminating direct API spend. FinOps considerations centre
  on opportunity cost (data volume constraints), downstream vendor costs, and
  the boundary between free PWS access and paid Weather Company enterprise
  offerings.
cost_model:
  type: free
  currency: USD
  monthly_base_cost: 0
  notes: >
    API keys are provided at no charge to registered PWS contributors.
    No metered billing, no overage charges, and no subscription fee applies
    to the wunderground.com PWS API tier.
budget_considerations:
  - item: PWS Hardware
    description: >
      One-time hardware cost for a personal weather station capable of uploading
      data to Weather Underground (required prerequisite for API key eligibility).
    estimated_range: $100 – $500 USD (one-time)
  - item: API Call Headroom
    description: >
      Free tier cap of 1,500 calls/day (~62.5 calls/hour) covers light to
      moderate polling use cases. Applications requiring higher volumes should
      budget for The Weather Company enterprise API plans.
    estimated_range: N/A for free tier; enterprise pricing via weathercompany.com
  - item: Enterprise Weather Company API
    description: >
      For commercial or high-volume use cases, The Weather Company (owner of
      Weather Underground) offers paid API access beyond the PWS contributor
      tier. Costs negotiated directly with vendor.
    url: https://www.weathercompany.com/weather-data-apis/
    estimated_range: custom pricing
cost_optimization:
  - Cache API responses locally to reduce repeat identical calls within the
    30-calls/minute and 1,500-calls/day window.
  - For near-real-time monitoring, schedule polling at the station's update
    interval (typically every 5–10 minutes) to avoid wasted quota on
    unchanged data.
  - Batch location lookups rather than issuing per-station location queries
    to stay within daily limits.
  - Monitor daily quota via the API Keys dashboard before deploying high-
    frequency integrations.
risks:
  - type: access_risk
    description: >
      API access is conditional on maintaining an active, data-contributing
      PWS registered with Weather Underground. If the station goes offline
      or is deregistered, API key eligibility may be affected.
  - type: vendor_risk
    description: >
      Weather Underground is owned by The Weather Company (Francisco Partners
      as of 2024). Platform changes or policy updates could alter free-tier
      terms without notice.