Rainbow Weather
AI nowcasting service delivering minute-by-minute rain and snow forecasts at 1 km resolution, refreshed every ten minutes and reaching four hours ahead. Available as a consumer mobile app and as three pay-as-you-go weather APIs.
What is Rainbow Weather?
Rainbow Weather is a precipitation nowcasting service built by Weather Forecast Technologies Ltd, a Cyprus company that operates alongside an affiliated Polish entity, Rainbow Meteo Technologies Sp. z.o.o. Its engine fuses live satellite and radar observations to predict rain and snow minute by minute, up to four hours ahead, on a grid of one square kilometre. Forecasts refresh every ten minutes, and a 250-metre grid is offered regionally on request. The company points to weatherindex.ai, an outside ranking, to claim the most accurate short-term precipitation forecast in the world.
The product has two faces. The first is a consumer app for iOS and Android, formerly called Rainbow.ai. It carries a live rain radar, seven-day forecasts, a hurricane tracker covering five ocean basins with wind speed, central pressure and trajectory, customisable alerts, home-screen widgets, a UV index and a dark mode. Google Play records more than 500,000 downloads and a 4.3 rating across 3,640 reviews.
The second is a developer platform. Three APIs sit on the same self-service portal. Nowcast returns minute-resolution precipitation, with type and intensity, for any coordinate over the next four hours. Tiles delivers 256x256 XYZ raster tiles over a CDN, with precipitation and cloud layers, ready for Leaflet, Mapbox GL, deck.gl or any tile-based mapping SDK. Weather covers hourly and daily variables, from temperature and wind to pressure, humidity, UV index, visibility and dew point. A single token authenticates every call, passed as a header or as a query parameter; a missing or invalid token returns 401.
Beyond the APIs, the company sells real-time radar feeds with roughly one minute of latency, historical radar covering more than a year across Europe and North America, and enterprise arrangements extending to webhooks, SDKs, dashboards, custom data layers, stronger service levels and on-premise or private-cloud deployment.
The business pages address twelve sectors, from logistics and agriculture to energy, retail, finance and media. Coverage today spans the developed world; genuinely global reach beyond radar range is described as still coming.
What it does
- Forecast rain and snow minute by minute, up to four hours ahead, for any longitude and latitude
- Display live precipitation and cloud tiles on any XYZ-compatible map
- Trigger alerts on incoming rain, snow and severe weather
- Track hurricanes across five ocean basins, with wind speed, central pressure and trajectory
- Pull hourly and daily variables: temperature, wind, pressure, humidity, UV index, visibility and dew point
- Feed historical radar observations into your own models as ground truth
- Replay the last two hours of map tiles in ten-minute steps
When to use Rainbow Weather / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Rainbow Weather is the right fit.
When to use Rainbow Weather
- Developers embedding live rain data into an app or a map, who want a token, a REST call and a free monthly tier rather than a sales cycle
- GIS and mapping teams needing 256x256 XYZ precipitation tiles that drop straight into Leaflet, Mapbox GL or deck.gl
- Operations planners in logistics, construction and outdoor events, whose schedules turn on whether it rains in the next four hours
- Data scientists and researchers who need a year or more of European and North American radar history as ground truth
- Everyday users who want a rain radar, hurricane tracking and push alerts on iOS or Android
When not to use Rainbow Weather
- Anyone building for safety-critical use: the API terms rule out air traffic control, emergency-service operation and life-support systems without a prior written agreement
- Teams needing forecasts beyond four hours, since the nowcast stops there and the Weather API only goes down to hourly resolution
- Buyers working from a procurement checklist: no DPA, no formal subprocessor list, no stated hosting country and no security certification are published
- Companies wanting to resell the feed or build a rival weather API, both expressly prohibited
- Users outside radar-covered regions, where genuinely global coverage is still described as coming
How to use Rainbow Weather
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- For everyday use, install the app from the App Store or Google Play, using the QR code on the home page
- Open the Now tab for rain intensity as text, or the Radar tab for the interactive map; no registration is required for basic use
- For integration work, create an account on developer.rainbow.ai through the Get API Key button
- Collect your token from the profile page of the developer portal
- Send it either as an Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key header or as a token query parameter; a missing token returns 401
- Call GET https://api.rainbow.ai/nowcast/v1/precip/{longitude}/{latitude} for a first nowcast, announced as under five minutes of work
- For map tiles, request the current snapshot timestamp first, then ask for tiles at that timestamp
- Subtract 600 seconds per ten-minute step to walk back through the last two hours of observations
- Copy one of the documented examples to get started: Leaflet map, nowcast chart, hourly temperature chart, wind rose or seven-day summary
- Contact sales@rainbow.ai for enterprise terms, real-time or historical radar, and volume discounts
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Unusual granularity: one square kilometre and one minute, refreshed every ten minutes
- Low entry price with no commitment: USD 0.10 per 1,000 calls, no contract, no minimum, cancel at any time
- A permanent free tier on all three APIs, reset every calendar month
- Fast to adopt: self-service portal, a single token, and worked examples for Leaflet, Mapbox GL and deck.gl
- Commercial use and sublicensing of your own applications are expressly allowed
- A mature consumer app behind the API, with over 500,000 downloads and a 4.3 rating
- Public status page and online documentation
Cons
- A privacy policy last revised in July 2022, still citing the EU-US Privacy Shield invalidated in 2020
- No DPA, no formal subprocessor list, no stated hosting country and no security certification
- Marketing and contract pull in opposite directions on aviation, emergency and maritime use
- No refunds at all, including on prepaid periods and the app's lifetime subscriptions
- Mandatory Rainbow.ai attribution wherever the data is shown
- Two different legal entities appear depending on which page you read
- Nowcast capped at four hours, and coverage still incomplete beyond radar range
Pricing & Plans
A permanent free tier is available on all three APIs and resets every calendar month: 5,000 Nowcast requests, 5,000 Weather requests and 30,000 map tiles. Beyond it, billing is strictly pay-as-you-go, with no contract, no minimum and cancellation at any time. The lowest paid entry point is USD 0.10 per 1,000 requests on the Nowcast and Weather APIs, while map tiles are charged at USD 0.20 per 1,000. Premium Support is a separate USD 500 per month. Enterprise arrangements, real-time radar and historical radar are quoted on request, and volume discounts are available. Subscription prices for the mobile app are not published on the website.
- global coverage
- precipitation type and intensity
- 1 km resolution
- 1-minute steps
- four-hour horizon
- ten-minute updates
- email support
- 256x256 XYZ tiles over a CDN
- precipitation and cloud layers
- 1 km resolution
- ten-minute updates
- email support
- hourly and daily forecasts covering temperature
- precipitation
- wind
- pressure
- humidity
- UV index
- visibility and dew point
- custom forecast delivery
- higher reliability and SLA
- custom data layers and integrations
- historical and predictive insights
- expanded coverage
- consulting
- dedicated support
- on-premise or private-cloud deployment
- ten-minute update rate down to five minutes
- latency around one minute
- roughly 1 km granularity
- advanced denoising and blending
- more than a year of high-quality observations for Europe and North America
- custom coverage
- priority 1 response time
- onboarding and implementation advice
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Rainbow Weather handles your data.
GDPR overview
There is no statement of GDPR compliance anywhere on the site. The regulation is invoked only twice, and never about the publisher itself: to justify a minimum age of sixteen for EEA residents, and to say that third-party services are either EU-based or compliant with the GDPR. No Article 27 representative is designated and no data protection officer is named. No data processing agreement and no formal subprocessor register are published. The privacy policy sets out no data subject rights at all, neither access nor erasure, portability or objection. It is dated 12 July 2022 and still cites the EU-US Privacy Shield, struck down by the Schrems II ruling in July 2020. Privacy questions go to a single address, support@rainbow.ai. The publisher is established in Cyprus, with an affiliated entity in Poland, so EU law applies regardless.
Who owns the data?
Rainbow keeps everything. Under section 5 of the API terms, all rights, title and interest in the API, in the API Data and in the surrounding software, designs and content remain the exclusive property of Weather Forecast Technologies Ltd and its licensors; customers acquire no intellectual property at all. What customers keep is their own code and content, excluding anything drawn from the feed. The licence granted is limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable and revocable, and access can be suspended or terminated at the company's sole discretion. Any feedback or suggestion a customer offers may be reused by the vendor with no obligation in return. On the consumer side, the app licence is personal and non-commercial only.
Reuse rights
Reuse is broad but conditional. Customers may process, modify and combine the data with their own, build derivative works or analyses, and distribute or sublicense the applications they create under whatever licence and pricing they choose, in personal and commercial projects alike. Nothing obliges them to open-source their work or apply a share-alike licence. Two conditions attach. Attribution to Rainbow.ai must appear, reasonably prominently, wherever the data or insights derived from it are shown to end users or the public. And the feed itself may not be resold, sublicensed, rented or exposed directly to third parties: that requires a separate written reseller or enterprise licence, and using the data to populate a competing weather API is prohibited outright.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Nothing is published. The site names no hosting country, no region and no cloud provider, and a targeted search of every collected page returned nothing. Map tiles are described as CDN-delivered, without saying from where. The only technical signal available is infrastructural rather than contractual: the domain resolves to a Cloudflare anycast address, which indicates an edge network but commits the vendor to nothing. Jurisdiction is clearer than location. The publisher, Weather Forecast Technologies Ltd, is registered in Limassol, Cyprus, and works alongside an affiliated Polish entity in Warsaw. Both terms of service place disputes under the law of the Republic of Cyprus, and the API terms give exclusive jurisdiction to Cypriot courts. Both countries are in the European Union. On the mobile side, the Google Play data safety card states that data is encrypted in transit and that data cannot be deleted. Anyone with a residency requirement will need to obtain a written commitment from the vendor, because the public documentation offers none.
Where Rainbow Weather works
Country-level availability.
Not available in
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Rainbow Weather.
- A forecast is a probability, not a promise. The vendor itself warns that weather data is inherently uncertain and provided as is, so treating a clear nowcast as a guarantee is the fastest way to be caught out
- The marketing invites sectors the contract excludes. Aviation, emergency services and maritime operations appear on the business pages, while the API terms prohibit air traffic control, emergency-service operation and life-support use without written permission
- Two legal entities are shown depending on the page: a Cyprus company in the terms and privacy policy, a Polish company in the footer. Know which one you are contracting with before signing
- Privacy documentation is three years old and lists no data subject rights, no retention period and no way to have data erased; the Google Play data safety card states outright that data cannot be deleted
- Nothing is refundable, including prepaid periods and the app's lifetime subscriptions, and the vendor may suspend or discontinue the service at any time and without notice
- Attribution is not optional. Displaying the data without a visible Rainbow.ai credit breaches the licence, which is easy to forget once a map ships
- Convenience can erode judgement. Minute-level alerts encourage outsourcing decisions that used to involve looking at the sky, and the habit becomes costly precisely when coverage thins out beyond radar range
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Low at both ends. The consumer app installs in the usual way and needs no account to show the radar or the forecast feed. On the developer side, you create an account, copy a token from your profile and send a single REST call; the portal claims a first nowcast in under five minutes. One authentication mechanism, two ways to pass it, and standard XYZ tiles that work with existing mapping libraries. Two points of friction: payment details are requested at registration, and real-time radar, historical data and enterprise terms go through a sales conversation rather than self-service.
Deployment
Apps stores
Integrations
Behind Rainbow Weather
Fundraising
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
How far ahead does Rainbow Weather forecast?
How precise is it?
Is there a free plan?
What does the API cost beyond the free tier?
How does authentication work?
Is there a mobile app?
What is the minimum age?
Can I use the data commercially?
Is it suitable for safety-critical work?
Who is behind the service?
Should you pick Rainbow Weather?
Rainbow Weather is a focused product that does one thing at an unusual level of detail: it tells you whether it will rain on a given square kilometre in the next few minutes, and it refreshes that answer every ten. The engineering around that promise is credible. Three APIs sit behind a self-service portal, a single token unlocks them, worked examples cover the common mapping libraries, and the free monthly tier is generous enough to build a prototype without talking to anyone. At USD 0.10 per 1,000 calls, with no contract and no minimum, the commercial friction is close to zero.
The weak side is not technical. The legal and compliance layer has not kept pace with the product: a privacy policy untouched since July 2022 that still leans on the invalidated Privacy Shield, no data processing agreement, no subprocessor register, no stated hosting jurisdiction and no security certification. For a publisher established inside the European Union, that gap is conspicuous. There is also a real tension between the marketing and the contract. The business pages court aviation, emergency services and maritime operators, while the API terms name several of those uses as prohibited without prior written permission.
None of this disqualifies the tool. It sets the boundary. For a developer adding live rain to a consumer app, a logistics team planning routes, or a researcher after radar ground truth, Rainbow Weather is an easy and inexpensive choice, and the free tier makes the evaluation cheap. For a regulated buyer, or for anything where a wrong forecast carries real consequences, the paperwork needs to be settled with the vendor before the first production call, not after.
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