Alternatives
4 products in weather, tariff & utility data, compared on the same verified data. Free and lower-cost options first.
The closest alternatives to Solcast are SolarAnywhere, UtilityAPI, Genability (Arcadia). None of them is free. Solcast itself does not publish a price.
Verified against the vendor’s own pages.
These are drawn from Solcast’s own published limits — not invented objections. Where we have no documented reason, we do not manufacture one.
| Product | Price | Model | Free tier | Integrations | Best suited for | Compare |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solcast (the original) | Not publicly disclosed | Quote only | Limited free allowance | 5 | — | — |
| SolarAnywhere | USD 500 | Per unit of usage | free tier limited | none | residential, C&I, utility | vs Solcast |
| UtilityAPI | USD 1.50 | Per unit of usage | free tier limited | 2 | residential, C&I, utility | vs Solcast |
| Genability (Arcadia) | Not publicly disclosed | Quote only | — | none | residential, C&I, utility | vs Solcast |
| Meteonorm | Not publicly disclosed | Quote only | No | none | residential, C&I, utility | vs Solcast |
Scroll the table sideways. The product column stays in place.
Clean Power Research's satellite-derived solar resource dataset — historical back to 1998, real-time, and forecast — built on the Perez/SUNY Albany irradiance model, sold as web access and an API, with free PV power modelling (PVWatts and pvlib) bundled into every licence.
The customer-authorisation and utility-data-collection layer: it gets a US electricity customer's permission, connects to their utility account, and delivers their meter details, their actual bills and their 15-minute interval usage to whoever they authorised — over a fully documented public API with a fully published price list.
The US electricity tariff database and rate-calculation engine that sits underneath other companies' solar savings numbers — now sold by Arcadia under the name Signal, with the Genability brand retired from all public marketing but still live in the API hostname.
The Swiss climate database that generates a typical meteorological year for any point on earth — the TMY file that PVsyst, PV*SOL, Polysun and SAM all import — now rebuilt as a web application plus four REST APIs (Climate, Observation, Forecast, Horizon).
An alternatives page that never says this is an advertisement for the alternatives.
We did not find a free alternative to Solcast in Weather, tariff & utility data. That is what the data shows today, not a claim that none exists.
Solcast does not publish a price, so buyers often look for options they can evaluate without contacting sales first.
Last verified
Vendors change pricing and features without notice. Check the vendor’s own page before deciding.