The best weather apps for iPhone in 2026

CARROT Weather is for people who check the forecast several times a day and want to choose where the numbers come from. Premium adds Apple Weather, AccuWeather, Tomorrow.io, and other sources beside the Foreca default, so you can switch when one source looks wrong for your town. Layout Maker rebuilds the home screen around the data you check most. The personality can stay on professional with no jokes.

Free covers current, hourly, and daily forecasts, plus the personality, with ads for fake products or indie apps. Widgets, maps, notifications, Watch complications, layout customization, and alternate sources need Premium. Rain, lightning, and storm-cell alerts need Ultra and are region-limited. In the US App Store in October 2026, Premium is $4.99 a month or $19.99 a year, Ultra is $9.99 a month or $39.99 a year, and Family is $14.99 a month or $59.99 a year for Ultra shared with up to five people through Apple Family Sharing. A 7-day Premium trial is offered. Skip CARROT if you glance once a day: Apple Weather already gives radar, widgets, and severe alerts for free.

Source switching is the real product

Default forecasts use Foreca. Premium adds Apple Weather, AccuWeather, Tomorrow.io, OpenWeather, Xweather, The Weather Channel, regional sources such as NOAA, and personal stations including Tempest and Netatmo. In our testing, that switch is what makes the subscription worth it when one provider keeps missing your local highs. Ultra adds quick source switching and multi-model forecasts so you can see how much the run-to-run spread is.

What CARROT costs

Premium is $4.99 a month or $19.99 a year. Ultra is $9.99 a month or $39.99 a year. Family is $14.99 a month or $59.99 a year and shares Ultra with up to five relatives. Those figures are from the US App Store in October 2026. The store also lists Mini and other SKUs without a clear billing period on every product name, so read the purchase sheet before you tap. There is no lifetime purchase.

Who should skip it

Skip it if Apple Weather already covers your day with free radar, widgets, and alerts. Skip Ultra if you only want another data source and Home Screen widgets, because Premium covers those. The free tier is thin once you want maps or notifications. Setup takes time: Layout Maker is deep, and first launch can feel like a chore. Android last saw a real update in June 2023, so a mixed household should not count on feature parity there.

Apple Weather is enough for most people on iPhone. It already includes radar, severe weather alerts where agencies publish them, Home and Lock Screen widgets, and next-hour precipitation in the countries Apple lists. There is no account and no ads. The limit is a single blended forecast with no way to pick another provider.

Apple says the Weather app is powered by the Apple Weather service, which draws on national agencies such as NOAA and the National Weather Service, the Met Office and ECMWF, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Deutscher Wetterdienst, the Japan Meteorological Agency, and Météo-France (Apple Support, June 2026). Next-hour precipitation forecasts and notifications are available for Australia, Ireland, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Severe weather information covers Australia, Brazil, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Thailand, the United States, and most of Europe, with QWeather for mainland China. Move on when the built-in forecast is often wrong where you live, or when you want more data on one screen you can reshape.

Mercury Weather is for people who want the week at a glance in a clean chart, without radar layers and alerts competing for attention. The main screen packs current conditions, hourly detail, and the daily strip into one calm view. It fits a morning check where you want temperature, rain chance, and the next few days without digging through map layers. It runs on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Vision Pro.

The developer's press kit lists Individual at $2.99 a month, $14.99 a year, or $49.99 once, and Family at $4.99 a month, $24.99 a year, or $89.99 once (USD, October 2026). Foreca is the default dynamic provider for most locations. Premium can also pick Apple Weather or OpenWeather, per the studio's release notes. Mercury added live radar in 2025 and rain, snow, and severe-weather notifications in late 2024. The free download covers less. Multiple locations and the fuller feature set need Premium. Pick another app if you need CARROT-level source switching, raw model maps like Windy, or you will not pay for a calmer layout than Apple Weather already gives free.

Windy is for sailors, pilots, paragliders, hikers, and anyone who wants wind, clouds, waves, and rain on a map and who will compare forecast models. Free access covers the map and major models such as ECMWF, GFS, and ICON. It is a planning tool, not an app for one glance a day.

Free covers the animated map and the main global models at coarser time steps. The App Store listing says Premium adds 1-hour steps, a longer outlook with more frequent updates, 24-hour radar and satellite loops, model comparison, and the tide forecast map. In the US App Store in October 2026, Windy Premium appears at $2.99 and at $24.99 and $29.99, with no billing period printed on every product name, so confirm monthly versus yearly on the purchase sheet. Pick another app if you only need tomorrow's high and the rain chance on a widget.