Customer Story
How AccuWeather delivers weather data to 1 billion users with Zuplo on Akamai
AccuWeather migrated from Google Apigee to Zuplo on Akamai Cloud, gaining a modern developer portal, programmable caching, and dramatic cost savings.
Industry Leader
AccuWeather has been the global leader in weather forecasting since 1962, trusted by billions worldwide.
Global Coverage
Weather data covering millions of locations around the world with hyper-local accuracy.
Massive Scale
Serving weather data at unprecedented scale to developers, apps, and websites globally.
About AccuWeather
AccuWeather has been a global leader in weather forecasting since 1962 and is the most recognized source of weather forecasts and warnings in the world. Famed for superior accuracy and hyper-local forecasts, AccuWeather helps individuals and businesses understand the impact of weather and make the best decisions. AccuWeather offers a self-serve API program where developers can sign up with a credit card and get instant access to their API, serving as both a funnel for larger enterprise contracts and generating direct revenue from the long-tail of apps, websites, and use cases that need weather information.
Visit AccuWeather The Challenge
Breaking Free from Legacy Gateway Limitations
AccuWeather had partnered with Google Apigee to deliver API monetization and governance but faced several critical problems that limited their ability to grow and innovate.
Apigee's monetization model was constrained, making it hard to experiment with different pricing structures and quotas. The developer portal was dated, making updates difficult and offering poor conversion of developers to their paid tier.
Apigee's product didn't fit into modern developer workflows, and AccuWeather struggled to add new APIs and services due to the complexity. Additionally, Apigee's high pricing meant they could only deploy the gateway in front of a minority of their web traffic, leaving AccuWeather to handle API governance themselves for the majority of their traffic.
Lack of Flexibility
Apigee's monetization model was constrained, making it hard to experiment with different pricing structures and quotas
Poor Conversion
The developer portal was dated, making updates hard and offering poor conversion of developers to paid tiers
Complexity
Apigee didn't fit into modern developer workflows, making it hard to add new APIs and services
Cost at Scale
High pricing meant the gateway could only cover a minority of web traffic, leaving most API governance unmanaged
The Solution
Zuplo on Akamai Cloud
Zuplo was created to be the antidote to legacy API gateways, designed to fit into how engineering teams work today. With a native GitOps approach, programmable extensibility means AccuWeather can innovate and try new business models easily.
Built on Zuplo's developer portal framework (Zudoku), the new developer.accuweather.com provides self-serve API key registration, interactive API documentation, built-in authentication and payments, and code samples with quick-start guides.
Deployed across Akamai's global network with CDN and Global Traffic Manager, the edge-native API gateway delivers integrated Akamai CDN + GTM, programmable caching at the edge, rate limiting and access control, and unified analytics and monitoring.
- Native GitOps approach with programmable extensibility
- Modern developer portal built on Zudoku
- Self-serve API key registration and payments
- Edge-native deployment on Akamai CDN + GTM
- Programmable caching at the edge
- Rate limiting and access control
The combined strengths of Zuplo and Akamai enable us to deliver weather data with unmatched speed and reliability.
Chris Patti
Chief Data and Science Officer, AccuWeather
The Results
Measurable Impact
Innovation Unlocked
AccuWeather can now experiment with new business models and pricing structures easily, solving the flexibility problem that constrained them with Apigee.
Higher Conversion
The modern developer portal is driving more developers from free to paid tiers, increasing revenue from their self-serve API program.
Engineering Productivity
The team can learn and leverage Zuplo to ship new services and tiers faster than ever, eliminating the complexity that slowed them down before.
Complete API Governance
Better unit economics mean AccuWeather now has a path to their API governance nirvana: one gateway to rule them all.
Ready to transform your API strategy?
See how Zuplo can help you deliver APIs at scale with a modern developer portal, programmable gateway, and dramatic cost savings - just like AccuWeather.