Comparison

Swellwire vs Elseweather

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Swellwire

Visualize global ocean conditions with a 3D globe. Get detailed forecasts for swell, wind, and weather at any coastline, from immediate conditions to two weeks ahead. Plan your next surf session or marine activity with comprehensive data.

Highlights
  • Interactive 3D globe with weather overlays
  • Live wave height and energy data
  • Detailed surf spot forecasts
  • Buoy data integration
  • Searchable surf spots and buoys
  • Favorite spots sync across devices
  • 16-day forecast extension (Premium)
Features
Read full description

Swellwire turns the world ocean into a planner. Spin the globe, drop into any coast, and read the swell, wind, and weather in seconds—right now, tomorrow, or two weeks out. WHAT YOU GET • Interactive 3D globe with live wave-height, wave-energy, wind, and temperature overlays. Pan, pinch, and tap to explore any shoreline on the planet. • Surf spot forecasts: wave height, period, direction, wind, and a clean at-a-glance read before you commit to the drive. • Buoy data from major coastal networks, surfaced inline on the same map you're already using. • Search any surf spot or NOAA buoy by name and jump straight to its forecast. • Favorite spots sync across devices, so your home break, your travel list, and your weekend backup are all one tap away. • Wave-energy color legend lets you compare a heavy four-foot day against a soft five-foot day at a glance. FREE OR PREMIUM Free includes the full globe, every overlay, and a 7-day forecast for every spot. Premium extends every forecast to a full 16 days — long enough to see swell windows before they're obvious to everyone else. WHO IT'S FOR Surfers planning the next session, the next trip, or the next swell. Sailors, kiters, foilers, divers, and anyone whose day depends on what the ocean is actually doing. WHY A GLOBE INSTEAD OF A FLAT MAP Swell doesn't care about map projections. A storm in the South Indian Ocean lights up reefs in California a week later — on a globe you can see why. Watch a long-period swell wrap around continents in the wave-energy view and a forecast starts to read like a story. ACCOUNT AND PRIVACY Sign in with Google to sync favorites and unlock the 16-day upgrade. Swellwire never posts on your behalf, never sells your data, and never emails you unless you ask. QUESTIONS AND FEEDBACK Email support@swellwire.com — we read every message. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

About

Elseweather

Read full description

Most weather apps answer what. You name a place, they draw you the sky. Elseweather answers where. Pan the map, set the conditions you’re after, and the cities that match are the ones left on the screen. The map is the search Pan to a region and the largest cities in view pick up a temperature, a condition icon and a fortnight of trend. Set a filter and the ones that don’t match drop away, so what’s left is an answer rather than a picture. Conditions, not just places Pick the conditions you’ll accept, sunny, cloudy, fog, rain, snow, storm, then drag a temperature band, cap the rain chance, the wind or the air quality index. They combine, and they’re read over whichever days you point them at: all of them, or any one. Now, then fourteen days A slider steps from the live reading out to a fortnight ahead. The map redraws for the day you’re on, and a filter can sit on a window of days that isn’t the one you’re looking at. Tap a city for the rest A scrubbable chart, a day-by-day table that unfolds into hours, rainfall in millimetres, wind, humidity and air quality, as far ahead as the forecast actually reaches, and no further. Layers over the top Temperature, precipitation, wind and pressure as raster layers under the annotations. Widgets Add the Here widget to your home or lock screen and it shows the conditions where you are — the temperature, the sky, and the hours coming up with the chance of rain under them. It takes its own reading in the background, so it's current when you glance at it, and a tap opens the full forecast for wherever you're standing. No account, no tracking There’s no sign-in, no profile and no analytics or advertising code. Nothing is watching which buttons you press. Elseweather Plus The first three days stay free for everyone. Plus opens all 14, on the map, in the search filter and in every city you tap. Terms of use Elseweather supplies no licence of its own, so it’s covered by Apple’s standard end user licence agreement: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

Screenshots

Swellwire4 screens
Elseweather4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Elseweather at none against Swellwire's 2. Swellwire's advantage is iOS requirement (16.0 vs 26.0). On price, ads and device support there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Swellwire sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month. Elseweather asks for nothing beyond the download.

Scorecard2 real differences · 7 level
Swellwire versus Elseweather: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterSwellwireElseweather
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (2 ratings) — better—
Number of ratings2 — better—
Update frequency—Every 2 days
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFreemium—
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad, Mac — better
Requires iOS16.0 — better26.0
Further details — not scored
Size6 MB11 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperNevada Scientific Inc.Jasper Bel

In-app purchases

2 purchases

Swellwire

Subscriptions2
  • Swellwire Monthly$4.991 Month
  • Swellwire Yearly$39.991 Year
None

Elseweather

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Swellwire free?
Swellwire is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Elseweather free?
Elseweather is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Swellwire or Elseweather have ads?
Neither Swellwire nor Elseweather shows ads.

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