Weather · head-to-head
Hong Kong Observatory vs wttr.in
The Hong Kong Observatory's Open Data API exposes roughly 50 machine-readable datasets covering real-time weather observations, 9-day forecasts, lightning counts, tropical cyclone tracking, tidal predictions, UV index and radiation levels, plus historical rainfall and sunshine records, for Hong Kong and nearby waters. It is a free, keyless service built for machine-to-machine consumption, mirrored on the government's data.gov.hk portal alongside the Observatory's own documented endpoint.
wttr.in returns weather reports as ASCII art directly to curl, wget, or a plain browser request, so there's no client UI to build. It's a standalone open-source Go service with plain-text, colorized ANSI, PNG, and JSON output modes, and needs no signup or API key.
| Hong Kong Observatory | wttr.in | |
|---|---|---|
| Authentication | None | None |
| Pricing | free | free |
| Formats | JSON, XML, CSV | plain text, ANSI, PNG, JSON |
| CORS | yes | yes |
| HTTPS | Yes | Yes |
wttr.in supports 4 response formats, while Hong Kong Observatory offers fewer — pick wttr.in for more integration flexibility.