Best Aviation Weather Apps for Pilots, Compared

Ask ten pilots which aviation weather app is best and you’ll get four answers and an argument. The disagreement isn’t really about taste. The apps in that conversation are built to do three different jobs, and pilots compare them as though they were all attempting the same one. An electronic flight bag exists to fly the airplane: charts, approach plates, filing, navigation, with weather as one layer among many. A dedicated weather app exists to answer one question before you go, fast, on a phone. And aviationweather.gov is where the National Weather Service publishes the products almost everything else is rendering.

So the honest answer to “which one should I use” is usually two of them. Most GA pilots end up with an EFB for the cockpit and something quicker for the daily “is today a flying day” check, plus the official site when they want to see the product rather than somebody’s drawing of it. What follows compares the tools by capability as of August 2026, with each claim linked to the maker’s own documentation. Which one you install depends on what you fly, where, and under which rules.

Three tools, three jobs

The electronic flight bag. ForeFlight Mobile and Garmin Pilot are cockpit systems. They carry VFR and IFR charts, geo-referenced approach and taxi charts, flight plan filing, synthetic vision, terrain and traffic. Weather is a deep layer inside a much larger product. If you fly IFR, or regularly fly into airports you don’t know, you need one of these and the weather question is downstream of that decision.

The dedicated weather app. Opens to the weather. Nothing to load, no route to build, no chart to download. The job is narrow: what is it doing at my airport right now, what will it be doing at 1900Z, and does that fit inside my limits. SkyFeed and Stationweather live here.

The official source. aviationweather.gov, run by the NWS Aviation Weather Center, publishes the METARs, TAFs, PIREPs, SIGMETs and G-AIRMETs the rest of the field displays.

Sitting slightly off to one side are consumer weather apps with aviation features bolted on: Windy and MyRadar. Neither is a briefing tool and neither claims to be. Both are genuinely good at what they’re for, which is why pilots keep them.

Seven things that actually separate weather apps

Feature lists are long and mostly irrelevant. These are the differences you’ll feel.

1. Decoded by default, or decoded on request. Here is a station report in plain English: ceiling broken at 800 ft, visibility 3 miles in mist, wind 120° at 12 gusting 19 kt, temperature 9 °C, dew point 8 °C, altimeter 29.96.

KXYZ 121553Z 12012G19KT 3SM BR BKN008 09/08 A2996

An app that shows the raw line first has handed you homework. One that shows the sentence first has answered the question. If the format is still slow going, our METAR decoder will walk any raw report, and the glossary holds the individual codes.

2. How deep the station page goes. Some apps stop at the current observation. The useful ones carry the TAF, a forecast timeline, runway wind components, NOTAMs, frequencies and nearby PIREPs on the same screen, because that is the set of things you check before you decide.

3. Whether the forecast is scrubbable. A TAF read as a wall of FM and TEMPO groups is a decoding exercise. A TAF you can drag a needle across, and read the conditions at 2100Z as a sentence, is a planning tool. The difference between the two products is worth understanding either way — our guide to METAR vs TAF covers what each one is actually promising.

4. Whether it knows your limits. A category pill tells you what the FAA calls the conditions, not whether you should launch into them. MVFR at your home field on a calm morning and MVFR at a strange field at dusk are the same flight category and different flights. An app that stores your personal minimums can tell you which one you’re looking at; one that doesn’t, can’t.

5. Whether it comes to you. Everything on this list will show you conditions when you open it. Fewer will tell you, unprompted, that the ceiling at your departure airport just dropped below a number you set.

6. What it does with no signal. Hangars are metal boxes and ramps have dead spots. An app that shows the last known observation with an honest age stamp is useful there. One that shows a spinner is not.

7. What it looks like on an iPad. If your iPad lives on a kneeboard, a stretched phone layout wastes the screen you bought.

The landscape as of August 2026

Tool	Runs on	Built to	Strongest at
ForeFlight Mobile	iPad, iPhone, browser	Fly the airplane	Charts and plates, recorded briefings, filing, weather imagery
Garmin Pilot	Apple devices, Android, browser	Fly the airplane	Charts, Leidos graphical briefings, weight and balance, avionics parity
Windy	Browser, iOS, Android	Show the model picture	Comparing forecast models, watching a pattern move
MyRadar	iOS, Android, Windows	Show precipitation now	Fast radar, AIRMET and SIGMET overlay, IFR flight tracking
Stationweather	iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch	Read aviation weather	Decoded METAR and TAF, D-ATIS, charts, roster briefings
aviationweather.gov	Any browser	Publish the source data	GFA, advisories, the Data API
SkyFeed	iPhone, iPad	Answer go / no-go	Decoded first, personal-minimums verdict, scrubbable TAF, per-station alerts

ForeFlight Mobile

A full electronic flight bag, and a deep one. ForeFlight’s own product page lists VFR and IFR charts from the FAA, NAV CANADA and EUROCONTROL, plus “SIDs, STARs, and geo-referenced approaches and taxi charts”, synthetic vision, a terrain profile view, and a weather set running from animated radar through graphical AIR/SIGMETs to global winds aloft. It files IFR and VFR flight plans and generates recorded weather briefings. ForeFlight Web adds planning, filing and briefing in a browser, and the company describes the product as running “On the iPad, the iPhone, and now on your desktop computer”. If you want one app carrying you from planning through the approach, this is the shape of that product.

Garmin Pilot

The other full EFB, and the one to look at first if you fly behind Garmin avionics, because the interface deliberately mirrors them. Garmin’s current app documentation lists NEXRAD radar, visible and infrared cloud imagery, METARs, TAFs, AIRMETs, SIGMETs, PIREPs, NOTAMs, winds and temperatures aloft, TFRs and lightning, plus weight and balance, checklists, logbook, and flight plan filing through Leidos Flight Services. Garmin has also brought Leidos graphical weather briefings into the app for the US and Canada, describing them as delivering information “similar to what is provided by a specialist at 1-800-WX-BRIEF”. A July 2026 update consolidated route planning, weight and balance, fuel planning and briefing into a single Flights page, and Garmin Pilot Web puts maps, charts, airport data and route planning in a browser. Garmin also ships an Android build, which makes it the only full EFB here for pilots who don’t fly with Apple hardware.

Windy

Not a briefing tool, and better than anything else on this list at one specific thing: showing you what the models think. Windy’s own documentation lists ECMWF, GFS and ICON Global among its global models, with ICON-EU, ICON-D2, AROME, NEMS, NAM and HRRR as regional options, and its compare view puts them side by side so you can see where they disagree. Its airport pages carry METAR, TAF and NOTAM data, and its App Store listing describes 16 altitude levels from the surface to FL450 and airport search by ICAO and IATA. Use it the night before, when the question is which way the pattern is moving, not what the ceiling is.

MyRadar

A consumer radar app with a real aviation layer. MyRadar’s own site says you can “View nationwide AIRMETs and SIGMETS, and track flights using our advanced aviation features”, and its blog documents plotting the filed route and live track of any IFR flight in the US, updated roughly every minute, with an optional aviation charts layer underneath. It runs on iOS, Android and Windows. The radar is fast and the app opens quickly, which makes it a reasonable second opinion on convection. It is not going to brief you, and reading radar well is a skill in itself.

Stationweather

A dedicated aviation weather app for Apple platforms, and a broad one. Its own site describes fully decoded METAR and TAF in “human-readable format”, a “Graphical TAF” timeline, NOTAMs with filtering and full-text search, live D-ATIS, “700+ aviation weather charts across every ICAO region”, and “40,000+ weather stations worldwide”, along with route weather on the map, widgets, Live Activities and an Apple Watch app. It also reads your calendar to build briefings from a roster, a professional-crew workflow most GA pilots won’t touch and airline pilots will recognize immediately. If you want breadth across the Apple ecosystem, or specifically want a Watch complication or a Mac app, this is the one to try.

aviationweather.gov

The source. The Aviation Weather Center publishes the Graphical Forecasts for Aviation, SIGMETs, G-AIRMETs, Center Weather Advisories, TAF and prog charts, PIREPs, winds and temperatures aloft, and a set of dashboards for terminal, winter and ceiling-and-visibility conditions. Its Data API serves raw text, JSON, GeoJSON, CSV, XML and IWXXM, with roughly 15 days of history, and it replaced the old Text Data Server that many third-party tools once read. The site is mobile-responsive, and it is the right place to go when you want the actual product rather than an app’s interpretation of it. Our guide to using the GFA covers the piece of it most pilots underuse.

Where SkyFeed fits

SkyFeed is a dedicated weather app for iPhone and iPad, built around one idea: your personal minimums are the organizing principle, not a setting buried three screens deep. Every METAR and TAF is decoded into plain English first, with the raw text one tap away. The pre-flight brief puts a GO / NO-GO / CHECK verdict at the top of departure, destination and optional alternate cards, read against the limits you set during onboarding. The TAF reader is a timeline you scrub, with FM, BECMG, TEMPO and PROB periods badged, and it parses international TAFs as well as US ones.

Each station page carries the current METAR, a 12-hour meteogram of category, wind, visibility and ceiling, per-runway headwind and crosswind components with a “Best” badge, NOTAMs color-coded by impact, ATIS and tower frequencies, and PIREPs within 50 NM from the last two hours. The map layers NEXRAD in the US and RainViewer worldwide with a time scrubber, plus SIGMET and AIRMET polygons and PIREP markers. Alert rules run per station: category drops below a threshold, wind exceeds a number, visibility falls under a limit, and your phone tells you. Offline, it shows the last known data with a staleness banner rather than an error. On iPad it’s master-detail and multi-column, not a stretched phone.

And it is a planning aid, not a substitute for an official preflight briefing. The pilot in command still owns the flight.

Who should use something other than SkyFeed

This is the part most comparison posts skip.

• You need charts and approach plates in the cockpit. SkyFeed has none and isn’t building them. ForeFlight or Garmin Pilot.
• You want to file, or you want a recorded briefing. SkyFeed doesn’t file. Either EFB does, or 1800wxbrief.com directly.
• You fly with Android. SkyFeed is iOS only. Garmin Pilot, Windy and MyRadar all have Android builds.
• You want a Watch complication or a Mac app. SkyFeed ships iPhone and iPad widgets but has no Apple Watch app and no Mac version. Stationweather covers both.
• You file PIREPs from your phone. SkyFeed displays them read-only. Submission goes through aviationweather.gov or Flight Service.
• You want icing, turbulence or prog chart layers. Those live in the EFBs. SkyFeed’s map carries radar, advisory polygons, stations and PIREPs.

If two of those bullets describe you, install something else. A weather app you fight is worse than no weather app.

Questions worth asking before you install anything

1. What will I actually do with it at 0600 in a cold hangar? Count the taps between opening the app and knowing whether you’re going.
2. Does it show me the answer or the data? Both are legitimate. Know which one you’re buying.
3. Does it know my limits, or only the category? A green pill is not a decision. The go/no-go framework is yours to run either way.
4. What happens with no signal? Try it on the ramp before you rely on it.
5. Does it cover the products I actually brief? NOTAMs and PIREPs are part of a briefing, and plenty of weather apps stop at the METAR.

Whatever you land on, the tool is not the briefing. The sequence is, and it’s the same sequence regardless of which icon you tap: our guide to briefing aviation weather before every flight walks it end to end.

Why this comparison is dated

Every capability above was checked against the maker’s own documentation in August 2026, and this is the fastest-aging post on this site. Garmin reworked Garmin Pilot’s planning flow in July 2026. The AWC retired its Text Data Server in favor of the Data API. Apps add and drop features constantly, and a comparison written from memory or from someone else’s listicle is wrong within a season. We re-check this one on a six-month cycle. If you find a claim here that no longer matches what the product does, it’s a bug, and we’d rather hear about it than have it sit.

Common questions

Is aviationweather.gov enough on its own?

Legally, yes. 14 CFR 91.103 asks that you become familiar with all available information, not that you use a particular tool, and the Aviation Weather Center publishes the primary products. Practically, it is a site you go to, and keep going back to. It has no notion of your personal minimums and shows the same page to a student pilot and an ATP. Most pilots who brief from it pair it with something faster for the daily check.

Does checking weather in an app count as a legal preflight briefing?

The regulation requires that you become familiar with all available information concerning the flight. It names no source and no phone number. FAA Advisory Circular 91-92 gives guidance for conducting a self-briefing using automated resources and positions Flight Service as a consultative option, so an app can carry the briefing as long as you actually cover the ground. What an app does not automatically give you is a briefing recorded against your name.

Which of these apps run on Android?

Garmin Pilot publishes an Android build alongside its Apple one, and both Windy and MyRadar ship Android apps. ForeFlight Mobile runs on iPad and iPhone, with planning, filing and briefing also available in a browser through ForeFlight Web. Stationweather and SkyFeed are Apple-only. If your cockpit tablet runs Android, that narrows the field before any other criterion gets a vote.

Can I file a flight plan from a weather app?

Not usually. Filing is an electronic flight bag capability: ForeFlight files IFR and VFR plans from the app or the web, and Garmin Pilot files through Leidos Flight Services. Dedicated weather apps, SkyFeed included, read weather and stop there. If you want to brief and file in one place, that points at an EFB. If you file elsewhere, or fly VFR without a plan, the gap never shows up.