Weather and climate · by European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF)

ECMWF Open Data

A free subset of ECMWF's real-time global forecasts from its physics model (IFS) and its machine-learning model (AIFS), published as GRIB2 files four times a day on a download portal and mirrored on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.

It hands out raw global output from one of the world's leading forecast centres, including its AI forecast model, under a licence that allows commercial reuse.

LiveAPI, no keyDownloadCommercial OK

Open ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/datasets/open-data ↗ agent.md

For your project

Official API: Official API · Free Open-Data Portal limited to between 500 and 2000 simultaneous connections; rolling archive keeps only the most recent 12 forecast runs (about 2-3 days)
“A subset of ECMWF real-time forecast data from the IFS and AIFS models is made available to the public free of charge.” ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/datasets/open-data
Key: Not needed
Formats: GRIB2, JSON
Data download: Yes grib2
“the ECMWF Open Data subset is replicated and available on major public cloud platforms , including Amazon Web Services (AWS) , Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) .” ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/datasets/open-data
License: CC BY 4.0 plus ECMWF Terms of Use The open subset of IFS and AIFS real-time forecast data; dedicated delivery or service agreements may carry charges
Commercial use: Commercial use OK
“This means that the data may be redistributed and used commercially, subject to appropriate attribution .” ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/datasets/open-data
Credit: Credit required
“ECMWF must be acknowledged (attributed) as the source. Attribution must be displayed prominently and include ‘this document/data/output/Results is/are based on data and products of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF)’.” apps.ecmwf.int/datasets/licences/general/
Embedding: Embedding with conditions
“Users must remove attribution if requested by ECMWF.” apps.ecmwf.int/datasets/licences/general/
Using the website: Free

Read on ECMWF Open Data's own pages on Oct 23, 2026 · license or terms · API docs. Check the license page before you ship.

For your agent

A request your code or agent can make with no key:

https://data.ecmwf.int/forecasts/

Use the ecmwf-opendata Python client (pip install ecmwf-opendata) or the AWS mirror instead of scraping data.ecmwf.int; listing a directory with 'Accept: application/json' returns JSON; files are GRIB2, so read them with eccodes, cfgrib or earthkit; only the last ~2-3 days are kept.
Display prominently that the output is based on data and products of ECMWF, with a link to CC BY 4.0, and say if you changed the data.
Keep under the portal's connection limit; for heavy use pull from the AWS/Azure/Google mirrors.
Download what you need within 2-3 days; older runs disappear from the rolling archive.

Paste into your agent: Read https://agentgid.com/resources/ecmwf-open-data/agent.md before using ECMWF Open Data.

What you can build

A self-hosted point-forecast API for a commercial app: download the 0.25° IFS run every 6 hours, extract 2 m temperature, wind and precipitation, and serve them per coordinate with the ECMWF credit.
A side-by-side map comparing ECMWF's AIFS (AI) and IFS (physics) forecasts for the next 10 days for weather enthusiasts.
A wind and wave routing helper for sailors that turns 10 m wind fields into a GPX-friendly route suggestion.

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