- Free allowance
- Free, keyless REST API for global solar and meteorological data (hourly, daily, monthly and climatology levels; daily series from 1981); no numeric request quota is published, the vendor says there is no set rate limit and usage is monitored.
- Verdict
- ★ qualifiesusable as stated; the read path was probed
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- anonymousno card, no phone
- Binding limit
- per-object-cap20 parameters per single-point request on the daily API, 15 on the hourly API, 1 per regional request
- Evidence
- measured20 sources; a live request was made and its output kept
- Freshness
- stale on 2027-01-02checked 2026-11-02 (live); stale on 2027-01-02
| Free tier | Free, keyless REST API for global solar and meteorological data (hourly, daily, monthly and climatology levels; daily series from 1981); no numeric request quota is published, the vendor says there is no set rate limit and usage is monitored. unit requests; metered on request-count; A single point takes up to 20 parameters on the daily API and 15 on the hourly API; regional requests take one parameter. Bulk path: the complete datastore is in public S3 buckets (s3://nasa-power as Zarr, s3://power-datastore as NetCDF, us-west-2), read with no AWS account, which bypasses the API's rate, transfer and timeout limits. Recent meteorological values are replaced by climate-quality values within 2 to 3 months. |
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| Price | none stated |
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| Limits | - request-rate unverified: no numeric limit is published; the vendor says there is no set rate limit and usage is limited to support equitable access source
- per-object-cap (binding) 20 parameters per single-point request on the daily API, 15 on the hourly API, 1 per regional request source
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| Binding | per-object-cap No request rate is published, so the parameter cap per request is the number that shapes a large pull; the S3 buckets have no such cap. |
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| Identity | anonymous No sign-up and no key: keyless API calls and anonymous bucket listings answered HTTP 200; the AWS registry page says no AWS account is required. |
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| Egress | JSON, CSV, NetCDF and ASCII answers; the S3 buckets are free of charge to everyone |
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| Per-object cap | 20 parameters per single-point request on the daily API, 15 on the hourly API, 1 per regional request |
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| Retention | not applicable: the unit is a request |
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| Interface | rest, s3 REST over HTTPS GET at power.larc.nasa.gov/api/temporal/{daily,hourly,monthly,climatology}/{point,regional}, with OpenAPI pages; Zarr and NetCDF files in anonymous S3 buckets |
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| Tooling | any HTTP client; any S3 client reads the buckets with no signing; Python tutorials for Zarr access are published by the project |
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| Composes with | A keyless solar and reanalysis-based weather source for coordinates worldwide; use the S3 Zarr store for bulk pulls instead of looping the API. |
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| Reliability | Repeating the same location or flooding with synchronous requests can get an application blocked; overload answers HTTP 429. |
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| Notes | Bulk path: s3://nasa-power (Zarr analysis-ready store) and s3://power-datastore (NetCDF). |
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| Evidence note | measured A keyless daily point call and an anonymous bucket listing were made and kept; the rate limit is not published and was not driven. |
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| Parsed numbers | |
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