Today I launched Beach Day API, a developer API for real-time beach, ocean, water quality, advisory, amenity, access, and condition data.
The goal is simple: make it easier for developers to build apps and tools around beach conditions without having to manually gather data from scattered sources.
Beach Day API currently supports beaches across the United States and Australia, and returns structured JSON that can be used in travel apps, weather apps, surf tools, tourism websites, hotel and resort platforms, map-based search experiences, local discovery apps, and coastal safety dashboards.
What the API includes
Beach Day API can provide data such as:
- Beach profiles
- GPS and location data
- Ocean and weather conditions
- Water quality grades
- Advisories and closures
- Amenities
- Access details
- Beach-specific safety and visitor information
- A proprietary Beach Day Score
The Beach Day Score is designed to give developers a fast way to surface whether a beach looks like a good choice for visitors on a given day.
Why I built it
Most weather APIs are broad. They can tell you temperature, wind, rain, or general conditions, but they usually do not answer the real user question:
“Is this a good beach day?”
That question depends on more than weather.
It can involve water quality, advisories, closures, ocean conditions, amenities, beach access, and the actual visitor experience. Beach Day API is built around that more specific use case.
Example use cases
Some things developers could build with it:
- A beach finder app
- A surf or coastal conditions app
- A hotel or resort beach conditions widget
- A local tourism guide
- A travel planning tool
- A map-based beach discovery experience
- A safety dashboard for advisories and closures
- A recommendation engine for nearby beaches
Built for simple integration
The API uses API-key authentication and returns clean JSON responses. I wanted it to be straightforward enough that a developer could start testing quickly and then build it into a real product without a lot of friction.
I also kept the pricing simple: prepaid credits, no subscriptions, no auto-billing, and free credits to start testing.
What is next
I am working on improving the developer documentation, adding marketplace listings, refining the endpoint structure, and expanding coverage and data quality over time.
I am especially interested in feedback from developers building travel, weather, hospitality, surf, local search, recreation, or public information products.
You can check it out here:
Would love to hear what you would build with it.