Report updated Jun 16, 2026
Windfinder: Wind & Weather map
For outdoor sports enthusiasts including kitesurfers, sailors, surfers, and paragliders who require precise, location-specific wind and wave data.
Windfinder: Wind & Weather map is a well-regarded weather app that is available. With a 4.8/5 rating from 154.2K reviews, it maintains solid user satisfaction. Users particularly appreciate highly accurate wind and weather forecasting provides critical safety data for offshore boating and fishing, though inappropriate and offensive advertising content appears within the app, causing significant user frustration and discomfort remains a common concern.
What is Windfinder: Wind & Weather map?
Windfinder is a weather forecasting app for outdoor sports enthusiasts, providing wind, wave, and tide data on iOS and Android.
Users hire Windfinder to mitigate environmental risk during maritime and outdoor activities, relying on its proprietary station network for accuracy that general-purpose weather apps lack.
Current Momentum
v5.39 · 2w ago
Intense- Shipped severe weather warnings for US/Europe.
- Added value grid for map parameters.
- Improved subscription purchase flow.
What makes this app unique?
What Does It Look Like?
What Are The Key Features?
Hourly high-resolution weather models for specific regions.
Live measurements from 21,000 global stations.
Push notifications for user-defined weather conditions.
How much does it cost?
- Free ad-supported tier
- Windfinder Plus (monthly/yearly)
- Remove Ads (3, 6, 12 months)
Freemium model anchored by a 7-day trial, gating high-resolution data and alerts behind recurring subscription revenue.
Who Built It?
Providing high-precision wind and weather data for outdoor enthusiasts and maritime professionals to ensure safety and optimal activity planning.
Portfolio
2
Apps
What other apps does Windfinder make?
Explore the full Windfinder report
Portfolio breakdown, audience, momentum, and every app published by Windfinder.
What do users think recently?
Low confidence · 49 reviews analyzed
How did the latest release land?
What is the recent mood?
Recent user voice shows a excited sentiment. Users appreciate highly accurate wind and weather forecasting provides critical safety data for offshore boating and fishing, but report inappropriate and offensive advertising content appears within the app, causing significant user frustration and discomfort.
Limited review volume (49 reviews). Sentiment analysis will deepen as more data lands.
View the full user-sentiment analysis
Mood gauge, ratings & review-volume history, every praise / complaint / request, and sentiment over time.
What is the competitive landscape for Windfinder: Wind & Weather map?
Where is it available?
Localized markets (19)
How's The Weather Market?
**Pricing Strategy**: Freemium model anchored by a 7-day trial, gating high-resolution data and ad-free access behind recurring subscriptions. **Target Audience**: Outdoor sports enthusiasts, including kitesurfers, sailors, and paragliders requiring precise, location-specific data. **Chart Performance**: The app maintains a strong presence in the Weather category, frequently ranking in the top 20 grossing apps across multiple European and Middle Eastern markets.
How does it evolve in the Weather market?
Windfinder maintains a top-20 grossing position in the Weather category across multiple European markets, but the gap between its free-tier discovery and premium-tier conversion suggests monetization friction.
Rank progression
186 active rankings tracked — 30-day window
Which niche is Windfinder: Wind & Weather map in?
Explore the full Surfing Maps niche
Every app in this space — 1 tracked, the niche's live rankings, and Marlvel's editorial take on the job-to-be-done.
The rivals identified
Nemeses(1)
With over 800,000 ratings and a high-velocity release cadence, Windy.com is the undisputed market leader in the wind and weather visualization space.
Differentiators
- Offers professional-grade meteorological visualization tools that far exceed the basic reporting found in the target app.
- Maintains a massive, global community-driven data network that provides granular, real-time weather insights for extreme sports.
- Aggressive release cycle with 7 updates in six months ensures rapid feature deployment and continuous platform optimization.
Head to head
Windy.com dominates through superior data depth and visualization; the target app must double down on its 'easy-to-use' positioning to retain the casual segment.
Contenders(3)
Captures a significant portion of the target app's audience by focusing exclusively on high-frequency tide and water level data.
Differentiators
- Operates as a single-purpose utility that provides faster access to tide charts than the target's multi-feature interface.
- Maintains a high-frequency update schedule to ensure tide data remains accurate for local maritime navigation.
A direct functional competitor that mirrors the target app's focus on wind, tides, and waves for outdoor sports.
Differentiators
- Includes dedicated community features like spot-specific user reports that help validate forecast accuracy in real-time.
- Integrates specialized tide and wave analysis tools that are more deeply embedded into the primary user dashboard.
Directly targets the marine and sailing niche with specialized forecasting tools that compete for the target app's core audience.
Differentiators
- Provides proprietary weather routing and departure planning tools specifically engineered for offshore sailing and marine navigation.
- Offers specialized marine-focused data sets that provide higher accuracy for coastal and open-ocean wind conditions.
Same space(3)
Offers a distinct, visual-first approach to weather tracking that competes for the target's map-based user experience.
Differentiators
- Uses high-resolution satellite imagery to provide a more immersive, visual weather tracking experience than standard forecast maps.
- Focuses on real-time global weather monitoring, making it a strong alternative for tracking large-scale weather events.
A massive general-purpose weather app that overlaps with the target's audience by offering broad weather coverage.
Differentiators
- Provides comprehensive, long-range weather forecasting that appeals to a broader demographic than the target's niche sports focus.
- Utilizes a massive, established brand presence to dominate general weather search intent in the European market.
A high-scale weather app that competes for the same general weather-tracking audience through superior radar visualization.
Differentiators
- Features high-definition, animated radar layers that provide better storm tracking capabilities than the target's static maps.
- Leverages aviation-grade data sources to provide more reliable severe weather alerts for general outdoor users.
New entrants(1)
Shows high development velocity with 11 releases in the last six months, indicating a rapid push for feature parity.
Differentiators
- Implements hyper-local precipitation forecasting that provides more actionable 'rain-start' notifications than the target's general reports.
- Focuses on a simplified, radar-centric UI that reduces the time-to-insight for users checking for immediate weather changes.
Compare Windfinder: Wind & Weather map against every rival
All rivals in one side-by-side table — identity, store metrics, ratings & sentiment, and strategic intel — plus a head-to-head page for each.
The outtake for Windfinder: Wind & Weather map
Strengths to defend, gaps to attack
Core Strengths
- 21,000-station proprietary network creates a high switching cost
- Forecast accuracy sustains organic install velocity
Critical Frictions
- Inappropriate ad content erodes brand trust
- Post-update search freezes increase churn risk
Growth Levers
- B2B partnerships with maritime equipment retailers
- Expansion of severe weather warnings into new markets
Market Threats
- Windy.com's 7-update-per-six-months cadence
- General-purpose weather apps encroaching on casual segments
What are the next best moves?
Audit ad-provider quality because inappropriate imagery is the top-cited complaint → protect brand reputation and reduce churn.
User sentiment analysis identifies offensive ads as the primary driver of negative feedback.
Trade-off: Pause the map-UI redesign sprint — ad-quality is a direct revenue and brand-equity risk.
Rebuild search-function logic because post-update freezes are causing data-loss reports → stabilize the daily active habit.
Technical instability following the latest update is the #1 cited functional failure.
Trade-off: Delay the new weather-parameter grid rollout — search stability is a core utility requirement.
A counter-intuitive read
The app's reliance on ad-supported revenue is a strategic moat, not a weakness, because it forces a lightweight interface that power-user-heavy rivals like Windy.com struggle to match.
Feature Gaps vs Competitors
- Advanced multi-model side-by-side comparison (available in Windy.com)
- High-fidelity interactive map layers for storm tracking (available in Windy.com)
Key Takeaways
- Prioritize ad-quality audits to protect the premium brand perception among high-LTV maritime users.
- Stabilize the search function and data-sync logic to prevent churn following the latest update.
- Leverage the proprietary weather station network as a B2B distribution channel for marine-safety partnerships.
Windfinder holds its category lead through proprietary data depth but bleeds user trust to inappropriate ad content, so revenue growth hinges on sanitizing the ad-inventory to protect the premium brand.
Where Is It Heading?
Mixed Signals
The weather-app market is consolidating around high-fidelity visualization, leaving Windfinder exposed to rivals that offer deeper meteorological modeling. The app must stabilize its core utility to prevent churn while leveraging its proprietary station network to differentiate from general-purpose competitors.
Technical regressions in the latest release (search freezes, data loss) erode the daily active habit, which compounds the rating drag.
The addition of severe weather warnings for the US and Europe shows active feature investment, not maintenance mode.