Convek vs XCWeather
A clean comparison for pilots and developers evaluating soaring weather options.
XCWeather has been a staple for UK paraglider, hang glider and sailing pilots for over twenty years - a free, ad-supported site with wind-focused observations and forecasts driven by public sector data. It's not a developer product and it's not really competing with Convek; this page exists to clarify which one you actually want.
What Convek is
Convek is a paid, developer-facing REST API serving soaring-specific WRF model output: wstar, BL height, BL top, cloudbase, soaring ceiling, convergence and other RASP-style fields, as structured JSON. It is not a pilot-facing UI.
What XCWeather is
XCWeather is a free pilot- and water-sports-facing web/app forecast for the UK and parts of Europe, focused on wind, temperature, pressure and visibility. It's supported by ads, draws on public sector data (UK Met Office, under the Open Government Licence), and does not offer a public developer API.
Facts here were accurate at time of writing. If something is out of date or wrong, please let us know.
Which should you pick?
Pick Convek if
You're building something that needs soaring weather data delivered as JSON - an app, instrument, or club display.
Pick XCWeather if
You're a pilot who wants a free, no-account wind forecast site to check before driving to the hill.
In short
If you're a UK paraglider or glider pilot who just wants to check the wind tomorrow, XCWeather is excellent and free - keep using it. If you're building an app, an instrument, or a club display and need soaring fields as JSON you can integrate, that's what Convek is for.