Lightning API · Pricing
Priced by the volt, not the vendor.
This isn't a demo. It's the same live feed every plan below draws from — see it, then pick how much of it you need.
lightning strikes recorded in the last 60 seconds
Real, live data over the Americas and Pacific right now. The exact same feed every tier below draws from.
See the full historical breakdown by state →Full Americas + Atlantic + Pacific coverage (incl. Canada, Mexico, Hawaii & Alaska) · bounding box filter · self-serve dashboard
Pay As You Go
5,000 free calls, then $0.003/call · hard cap 100,000 calls/month
- 5,000 free calls every month
- Then $0.003/call, capped at 100,000
- Best value under ~12,000 calls/mo; Starter is cheaper above that
- 5,000 radar tiles, then $0.0010/tile (beta)
- Set a spending cap any time, covering both
- 1 storm alert zoneNew
- 15-min history window
Starter
150,000 calls/month · $168/yr billed annually
- 5 storm alert zonesNew
- 15-min history window
- 25,000 radar tiles (continental US, beta)
- Ticket support
Pro
Popular5,000,000 calls/month · $672/yr billed annually
- 25 storm alert zonesNew
- 6-hour history windowNew
- 250,000 radar tiles (continental US, beta)
- Radar storm cell tracking
- Cloud-to-ground classification
- Advanced zone filtersNew
- Ticket support
Ultimate
25,000,000 calls/month · $1680/yr billed annually
- 100 storm alert zonesNew
- 24-hour history windowNew
- 5,000,000 radar tiles (continental US, beta)
- Storm cell tracking
- Predictive storm alerts
- Real-time WebSocket push
- Priority ticket support
Supercell
Unlimited calls/month · $5040/yr billed annually
- Failover included
- Unlimited API calls, generous rate limits
- 1,000 storm alert zonesNew
- 7-day history window
- Unlimited radar tiles (continental US, beta)
- Storm cell tracking
- Predictive storm alerts
- Real-time WebSocket push
- Priority ticket support
Need guarantees? Go Enterprise.
Volume, availability and support terms are agreed with you and written into a contract, rather than picked off a page. If you need a number you can hold us to, this is the plan that carries one.
- Custom zone allowance
- Unlimited history window
- Storm cell tracking
- Predictive storm alerts
- Real-time WebSocket push
- Availability as agreed
- Priority, dedicated ticket support
Opens a support ticket
Annual plans billed once per year at 30% off. Monthly plans billed every month. Cancel any time. No setup fees. Questions? Contact us.
Every plan counts calls the same way: a request counts as at least one call, however few strikes come back. Above 100 returned it counts one call per 100, rounded up, and the storm-cell and radar-cell endpoints count one per 10 records, so a large query costs more than a small one, and a small one never costs less than one. The live streaming feed on Ultimate and above counts one call per 50 strikes pushed, twice the rate of the same strikes fetched by request, because they arrive as they happen. On Pay As You Go that is what the $0.003 rate applies to, which is why a monthly plan is better value at sustained volume: past roughly 12,000 calls a month, Starter costs less than Pay As You Go and includes far more headroom. Use the cost calculator to check your own numbers. See the docs for details.
Work out your cost
What would you actually pay?
Move the slider to your expected monthly usage. Every request counts as at least one call, however few strikes come back; above 100 returned it counts one per 100, rounded up.
cheapest: Starter
At 25,000 calls a month, Pay As You Go costs $60.00 while Starter covers it for $14.00 a month, billed annually at $168 up front, and gives you room to grow. Pay As You Go is priced per call and always billed monthly for what you use, so it is the cheaper option only up to about 9,700 calls a month at the annual rate. Above that, a fixed plan is better value.
Compare plans
Every feature, every tier, at a glance.
| Feature | PAYG | Starter | Pro | Ultimate | Supercell | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly API calls | 5,000 free calls, then $0.003 each | 150,000 | 5,000,000 | 25,000,000 | Unlimited | Negotiated |
| Monthly ceiling | 100,000 | 150,000 | 5,000,000 | 25,000,000 | None | Negotiated |
| History window | 15 min | 15 min | 6 hr | 24 hr | 7 days | Unbounded |
| Storm alert zones | 1 | 5 | 25 | 100 | 1,000 | Custom |
| Cloud-to-ground vs. intra-cloud classification on every strike | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Advanced zone filters (CG-only, minimum strike rate) | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Radar storm cell tracking | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Radar imagery tiles (continental US, beta) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Monthly radar tiles (separate from API calls) | 5,000 | 25,000 | 250,000 | 5,000,000 | Unlimited | Negotiated |
| Storm cell tracking | — | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Predictive storm alerts | — | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Storm rotation tracking (continental US) | — | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Support | — | Ticket support | Ticket support | Priority ticket support | Priority ticket support | Priority, dedicated ticket support |
| Real-time WebSocket push | — | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
How we compare
The only lightning data API with pricing you can actually see.
Nobody else sells lightning data as its own product. Every other provider bundles it into a full weather API, either as a steep pay-as-you-go multiplier (Vaisala Xweather) or a flat-rate tier (Weatherbit), and most won't quote you a price at all until you talk to sales.
Vaisala Xweather doesn't have a lightning-only plan either
Lightning API Pro, 5,000,000 calls/mo
$56/mo
Xweather, same 5,000,000 calls/mo
$29,991/mo
Roughly 536× cheaper for the exact same volume. That's 99.8% off what Xweather would charge.
Xweather bills lightning through their pay-as-you-go Weather API at a 10× cost multiplier. Standard endpoints cost $0.0006 per access. Lightning costs $0.006 per call, after a 15,000-access monthly free tier shared across every endpoint they offer.
Their own live cost calculator confirms it: at 1,000,000 lightning calls a month it quotes $5,991. Scaled up to 5,000,000 calls a month, the same volume as our Pro plan, that comes to $29,991/month.
Every Lightning API plan compared against the equivalent Xweather pay-as-you-go cost and Weatherbit's closest flat-rate tier, using the same billing toggle above.
| Tier | Lightning API | Xweather (equivalent) | Weatherbit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter 150,000 calls/month | $14/mo | $891/mo 64× cheaper with Lightning API | $45/mo 69% cheaper, 25,000 calls/day cap |
| Pro 5,000,000 calls/month | $56/mo | $29,991/mo 536× cheaper with Lightning API | $195/mo 71% cheaper, 250,000 calls/day cap |
| Ultimate 25,000,000 calls/month | $140/mo | $149,991/mo 1071× cheaper with Lightning API | $475/mo 71% cheaper, 2,000,000 calls/day cap |
At these volumes, Xweather's own calculator recommends contacting their sales team for custom enterprise pricing instead of paying the list pay-as-you-go rate. The figures above use their published rate for a consistent comparison. A negotiated enterprise rate could be lower, but it also means going back to a sales conversation, which is exactly what a flat, published price avoids.
Radar tiles · New · Beta
Radar is included, not a second bill.
Every plan comes with a radar tile allowance of its own, separate from your API calls and at no extra cost. On Xweather, tiles are metered accesses like everything else, so they land on top of what you already pay for lightning. Weatherbit keeps map tiles off its entry plan altogether.
| Tier | Lightning API | Xweather (same tiles) | Weatherbit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter 25,000 tiles/month | Included $0 on top of the plan | +$15/mo on top of their lightning cost | Not included on Standard |
| Pro 250,000 tiles/month | Included $0 on top of the plan | +$150/mo on top of their lightning cost | Included from Plus up |
| Ultimate 5,000,000 tiles/month | Included $0 on top of the plan | +$3,000/mo on top of their lightning cost | Included from Business up |
Everyone else makes you ask
Tomorrow.io
Lightning is a “premium parameter.” Reach out to their sales team for access.
OpenWeather
Lightning API isn’t on their public pricing page. It’s a separate, enterprise product.
Meteomatics
No published pricing for lightning data. It’s “tailored to individual needs.”
DTN
Enterprise weather data provider. Sales contact only.
The Weather Company (IBM)
Enterprise data hub access. Sales contact only.
Comparison based on publicly listed pricing at xweather.com's pay-as-you-go cost calculator and weatherbit.io/pricing, plus each other provider's own documentation, verified July 2026. Xweather figures are calculated from their published rate ($0.0006 base, 10x lightning multiplier, 15,000 free accesses) applied at each Lightning API tier's own monthly call volume, since their calculator only lets you model up to 1,000,000 calls directly (it quotes $5,991 at that volume). Radar tile figures use Xweather's raster map rate ($0.0006 per tile, no lightning multiplier) at each Lightning API tier's own included tile allowance, with no free accesses credited since the shared 15,000 are already spent by the calls above. Weatherbit lists its Maps API on Plus and above but publishes no tile allowance for it. Weatherbit and Xweather plans include their full weather API, not lightning alone. Lightning API is lightning-only, which is why it's cheaper in absolute terms as well as per endpoint. Third-party pricing can change, so check current rates before deciding.