Thanks for that, I just checked out their free tiers and there is enough there to get started with. This is very much for hobby or development purposes, which is fine.

Imaginably I might want to write an app that needs weather data at scale, even for a simple thing. Imagine I sold chocolate teapots online and, in the delivery notes, wanted to advise customers to not leave their deliveries outside for too long if it was going to be sunny in their postcode area on the day of delivery. The free tier might work.

If it was something more popular, for example milk or veg boxes, then I would need to start paying. This would be for a marginal value but of wording in a delivery note, but something that might differentiate the service.

Or, imagine I sold outdoor gear, with a newsletter that goes out to 100,000 customers. Depending on their postcode I might want to promote deckchairs or umbrellas. Although this level of personalisation isn't going to win any awards for innovation, it is something that could be done, enabling a medium sized company to compete against the big companies that are optimising their promotions for the weather.

There is also the research aspect, to verify a suspected phenomenon against data in an amateur way that you would never get a research grant for.

All considered, I wish they did free with no restrictions.

I feel that it’s fine that businesses are charged for heavier use of a tax-funded service, especially when it would increase the running cost of those services, and where there’s no obvious benefit to the taxpayer.

I get the argument about using taxpayer services to leverage a more competitive business environment, and I agree that’s important, but I don’t think an advertising newsletter is a good example.

And honestly the data’s fairly cheap for high-accuracy weather data. You get a lot of API calls for not very much money.

The massive dataset, the GRIB, is either free or close to free if you get the US version but is expensive if you get the UK version. I appreciate your point that a fair price should be charged but you can't compete with free.

The UK government has made questionable decisions over the years regarding what it does, personally I think the government has no business making cars (British Leyland) or making planes (Concorde). But weather is important to the realm and a fair candidate to be funded by the taxpayer but with that data also being free.

It would be nice to think that uses of weather data are going to be life saving things, but the applications fall off quickly once you have the farmers and the sailors sorted out with what they need. You soon go from this to betting on horses and whether the ground will favour particular horses.

As for the example of selling deckchairs or umbrellas, consumer spending is what drives Western economies, like it or not.

Not all public goods have to benefit everyone, but there does have to be a clear distinction between what is best provided as a public good by government and what is best left to the private sector.