WeatherLink Basic vs Pro vs Pro+: What's Free in 2026?

Every Davis station lives on weatherlink.com, and sooner or later every owner stares at the upgrade page asking the same two questions: what does the free plan actually include, and is WeatherLink Pro worth paying for? This is a plain reference to the three tiers — Basic, Pro, and Pro+ — as they stand in mid-2026: what each includes, what each costs, the catches people miss, and honest advice on when the free plan is genuinely enough.

What does the free WeatherLink Basic plan include?

WeatherLink Basic is free and covers day-to-day use well: the live dashboard and mobile app, daily summaries with highs, lows, and rainfall totals, email alerts, uploads to networks like Weather Underground and CWOP, and API access to current conditions at roughly 15-minute intervals. What Basic leaves out is your history.

In practice that means you can always see what your station reads right now, get notified when a threshold trips, put your station on the worldwide map, and share data with public weather networks — all without paying. Davis's knowledge base also notes that logger-based stations can download a limited number of archive records (around ten thousand) directly from the logger's memory. But browsing last month's chart, exporting a year as CSV, or pulling past data through the API is where the free tier stops.

What does WeatherLink Pro add?

Pro's headline feature is historic data: unlimited storage and review of your full archive, chart and data menus for browsing past readings, CSV export, and access to historic data through the API. Upload intervals also shorten from about 15 minutes to 5. Davis lists Pro at about $3.95 per month per device — check WeatherLink for current pricing.

Beyond history, Pro adds configurable alarm thresholds on the platform and six "Pro Share" tokens, which let you grant other WeatherLink users access to your station's historic data. Subscriptions are sold as 1- or 3-year terms, with the 3-year option about 15% cheaper per month. Worked out annually, the 1-year Pro rate lands around $47 per device per year.

What does Pro+ add over Pro?

Pro+ mainly serves agricultural users. It adds Davis's Integrated Pest Management (IPM) tools, raises the Pro Share allowance from six to ten, and pushes third-party upload intervals down to as little as one minute. Davis lists Pro+ at about $8.95 per month per device — more than double the Pro rate.

For a typical home station, the only tempting part of Pro+ is the one-minute upload interval to networks like Weather Underground. Unless you run degree-day or disease-pressure models for a farm, orchard, or vineyard — which is what the IPM module is built for — Pro covers everything most owners actually use. It is worth being clear-eyed here: Pro+ is not a "better Pro" for hobbyists, it is a specialist tier.

WeatherLink Basic vs Pro vs Pro+ at a glance

Prices below are Davis's listed 1-year rates as of mid-2026; check Davis's WeatherLink plan page for current pricing and terms.

What are the catches people miss?

Three come up repeatedly: your station's history sits behind the paywall even though the data is being recorded; the API differs by tier in capability, not just speed; and plans are per device, so a second station means a second subscription. None are deal-breakers, but each one surprises people.

On the first point, WeatherLink's servers store what your station uploads even on Basic — the subscription is what unlocks viewing and exporting it. On the API, Basic gives your own programs current conditions at 15-minute intervals, while the historic endpoints require a paid plan; if you only need a key for a third-party service, the free API key setup is the same either way. On devices: each logger or WeatherLink Live needs its own upgrade, though cellular stations like Vantage Connect include Pro automatically, and an upgrade can be moved between stations on your account.

When is the free Basic plan enough?

Basic is enough if you mainly check live conditions, want phone and email alerts, and don't need to browse or export past data through Davis's own tools. Basic is not enough if you want long-range charts inside WeatherLink, CSV downloads, historic API access, or the agricultural IPM tools.

A fair way to decide: live in the free tier for a month and notice what you actually reach for. If you keep wanting to compare this week against last month, the history paywall will bother you — that is precisely the itch that drives most Pro upgrades, and for some owners the dashboard itself is the bigger frustration. If you only glance at current conditions over coffee, Basic plus a free network upload may be all you ever need.

How do third-party services work with WeatherLink tiers?

Third-party services read your station through the WeatherLink v2 API, and the free Basic plan is enough for any service built on current conditions. Pro Weather, for example, works fully on Basic: it polls your station and stores every reading itself, building your history forward from the day you connect.

This changes the upgrade math. If the only reason you are considering Pro is history, a service that archives your data independently covers that from day one — charts, records, and almanac keep growing with no Davis subscription. What a paid WeatherLink tier adds in that setup is access to your past archive: the readings your station logged before you connected, which live behind the historic API. We cover the differences in detail in WeatherLink vs Pro Weather and in the docs page on how WeatherLink plans affect Pro Weather. If you want to see your station on its own website, you can start a free 14-day trial on a Basic-plan station — no credit card, no WeatherLink upgrade required.

Common questions

Is WeatherLink free?

Yes, at the Basic level. Every Davis station gets the free tier: live dashboard, mobile app, daily summaries, alerts, network uploads, and current-conditions API access around every 15 minutes. Pro and Pro+ are optional paid upgrades, and their main draw is access to your station's historic data.

What does WeatherLink Pro cost per year?

Davis lists Pro at about $3.95 per month per device on a 1-year term — roughly $47 per year — with a 3-year term about 15% cheaper per month. Pro+ is about $8.95 per month per device. Prices can change, so check WeatherLink's plan page before buying.

Can I export my data on the Basic plan?

Not meaningfully. CSV export and the historic data menus are Pro features, and the API's historic endpoints also require a paid plan. The one exception: logger-based stations can download a limited batch of records (around ten thousand) held in the logger's own memory. For ongoing exports, you need Pro or an independent archive.

Does Pro Weather require a paid WeatherLink plan?

No. Pro Weather works on the free Basic plan — it reads current conditions through the API and stores everything itself, so your history builds forward from the day you connect. A paid WeatherLink tier is only useful if you also want access to readings from before you connected, via the historic API.