Windy vs PredictWind: which weather app for sailors in 2026?
Both are excellent. They are also built for different jobs. This is the honest comparison — pricing, model coverage, routing, offshore use, and a verdict that does not pretend one app replaces the other for every sailor.
The 30-second verdict
- Use Windy ifyou sail coastal, day-sail, or want a free / cheap tool for general weather awareness across multiple models. The free tier alone is more useful than most apps' paid tiers.
- Use PredictWind ifyou do offshore passages, need weather routing against your boat's polars, or take GRIBs over satellite (Iridium GO!, Starlink). The routing is genuinely best-in-class.
- Most cruising sailors run both. Windy daily for situational awareness, PredictWind for the night before a passage. Total cost under £200/year if you go PredictWind Standard, often still cheaper than one offshore weather routing service.
At a glance
| Windy | PredictWind | |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Yes — fully usable | Yes — limited, teaser-style |
| Paid (annual) | ~£20–£50/year | ~£175–£480/year |
| Primary use | Visual model comparison | Routing & passage planning |
| Proprietary models | None (public models) | PWG, PWE |
| Weather routing | Basic (Pro tier) | Best-in-class |
| Offshore / Iridium | No | Yes (Iridium GO!, Starlink) |
| Polar diagrams | No | Yes — required for routing |
Scored across ten dimensions
Filled dots = score out of 5. The scores are weighted equally; adjust for what you actually need. A coastal day-sailor and an Atlantic-circuit cruiser will weight these very differently.
Genuinely useful free — ECMWF, GFS, ICON, NAM all viewable, no signup required.
Free tier is a teaser. Real features need a paid plan.
Premium ~£20/year, Pro ~£50/year — among the cheapest serious tools in sailing.
Standard ~£175/year, Pro ~£480/year. Justifiable for offshore, steep for coastal.
ECMWF, GFS, ICON, NAM, HRRR, AROME, ICON-EU — switch and compare directly.
ECMWF, GFS + proprietary PWG, PWE — fewer but high-res in their domain.
Basic routing in Pro tier — not the primary use case.
The headline feature. Routes against polar diagrams, optimised for weather windows.
Manual — slide the time bar across multiple models.
Departure Planner explicitly built for this; shows windows across days.
Built for online use; offshore use is awkward.
GMDSS-style downloads via Iridium GO!, Starlink — built for ocean passages.
High-res European models (AROME, ICON-EU) excellent for coastal.
PWE proprietary model often beats public models on coastal accuracy.
Industry-leading visualisation, smooth animation, model overlay genius.
Functional but utilitarian, less visually compelling.
Casual users immediately, deep features take time.
Steep — polar diagrams, routing settings, model selection all need learning.
Used by tens of millions — pilots, surfers, sailors. Sticky brand recognition.
Smaller but cult-status among offshore sailors and ARC participants.
Aggregate, equal weighting
Windy wins on price and breadth; PredictWind wins on the things serious passage-makers actually pay for. Both deserved scores.
When each one wins
Pick Windy for:
- Coastal and day-sailing. A free Windy account is enough for 90% of cruising decisions in regions with reliable mobile signal.
- Comparing models. If you want to see how ECMWF disagrees with GFS for tomorrow afternoon, Windy is the only app that lets you flip between models in a single tap.
- Beginners learning weather. The visual gradient overlays make pressure systems, fronts, and wind acceleration visible — a learning tool as much as a forecast tool.
- Budget-sensitive sailors. Premium at ~£20/year is a no-brainer if you sail more than a few times a year.
Pick PredictWind for:
- Offshore and ocean passages. ARC, ARC+ and World Cruising Club rallies use PredictWind by default. The combination of weather routing + satellite GRIB delivery + departure planning is what blue-water cruisers actually need.
- Boats with polar diagrams.Routing only works if the app knows how fast your boat sails at each wind angle. Once you have polars set up, PredictWind's routing recommendations are genuinely useful — not just "leave Tuesday."
- Iridium GO! or Starlink users. The compressed GRIB delivery over satellite is the killer feature when you are 200 NM from a cell tower.
- Sailors who treat weather as a planning problem.If you are the person on the boat who agonises over departure windows three days in advance, this is your tool.
The honest verdict
Most internet comparisons treat this as a winner-take-all question. It is not. Windy and PredictWind do overlapping but genuinely different jobs, and the right answer depends on how far from a marina you intend to be when you are using them.
Windy is a forecast viewer. It is the best one in the world. The model coverage, the visualisation, the speed, and the price are all unmatched. For 95% of European coastal and Med cruising, free or Premium Windy is enough. Anyone who tells you to pay for PredictWind for a week of Greek-island hopping is either working for PredictWind or has not sailed coastally in years.
PredictWind is a passage-planning system. It is the best one in the world. Once you are 50 NM offshore — past mobile signal, in committed open water with a 36-hour weather window mattering more than which café to anchor outside — the routing, polars, and satellite delivery become irreplaceable. The price stops looking like a subscription and starts looking like insurance.
The cleanest mental model: Windy is for the present and the next 24 hours, PredictWind is for the next 72 hours. They are not really competitors. Most experienced cruisers we know run both, use Windy daily, and turn on PredictWind the night before they leave a port.
One honest pushback on PredictWind: their proprietary models (PWG, PWE) are marketed as superior to public models. In our experience they are often marginally better on coastal accuracy and roughly equivalent offshore. Do not pay PredictWind purely for the proprietary models — pay for the routing system that uses them.
FAQ
Is the free version of Windy enough?
For coastal cruising — yes, for most people, most of the time. The free tier gives access to all major public models (ECMWF, GFS, ICON, NAM) with up to ~3-hour forecast intervals. Premium gets you higher-resolution updates and longer lookahead, but the free tier is genuinely a complete forecasting tool.
Are PredictWind's proprietary PWG and PWE models actually better?
Sometimes — especially on coastlines with complex orography (mountains affecting wind flow). They are based on public models (PWG on GFS, PWE on ECMWF) with proprietary downscaling. The improvement is real but marginal; the bigger value of PredictWind is the routing engine that uses them, not the models themselves.
What about WindFinder, Buoyweather, or Windguru?
All real options. WindFinder is great for spot forecasts at specific harbours — we have a separate WindFinder guide. Buoyweather and Windguru have niche followings. None of them compete with Windy for visual model comparison or with PredictWind for routing, which is why this comparison focuses on those two.
Which one for RYA Yachtmaster prep?
For exam coursework, neither — the syllabus teaches synoptic charts, isobaric analysis, and Beaufort scale interpretation from first principles. As real-world practice, Windy is the better learning tool because the model overlay makes weather systems visible. See our meteorology practice quizzes for the theory side.
Try them yourself
Windy
Best for: coastal sailing, model comparison, learning weather. Free tier is fully usable.
Open Windy →PredictWind
Best for: offshore passages, weather routing, satellite GRIBs. Free trial with paid tiers.
Try PredictWind →Windy link is non-affiliate. PredictWind link is an affiliate link; Elio may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We have no commercial relationship with either company beyond that. The verdict above is the same one we'd give a sailing friend.