Zasder Weather vs Before It Strikes
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Zasder Weather
This app provides a private and customizable weather experience for personal weather stations. Connect your own backend to manage your data securely, with no ads or subscriptions. Supports multiple weather sources and offers detailed insights, charts, and custom alerts.
- Multi-station dashboard
- Historical data and insights
- Detailed charts
- Custom alerts
- Apple Watch app
- Home Screen widgets
- Flexible units
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Zasder Weather is a clean, fast app for personal weather stations on iPhone, Apple Watch and Mac. One purchase, every platform. It is bring-your-own backend: point it at your own server, and your station's data is yours, end to end. No ads, no tracking, no subscriptions. WORKS WITH YOUR STATION • AmbientWeather, Davis WeatherLink, WeatherFlow Tempest and Ecowitt from their clouds, an Ecowitt gateway posting straight to your server, or a WeatherLink Live read on your network for two-second freshness. • Direct radio capture: a $20 LilyGO board decodes AcuRite Atlas or Fine Offset, Ecowitt and Ambient sensors off the air. • AirGradient and Govee air monitors with CO2 and PM2.5, and soil probes on up to eight channels. • No server yet? The Mac app builds one on your Fly.io account in a minute, or run the backend in Docker. THE DASHBOARD • Live conditions, a 24-hour curve, today's highlights ranked against your own record, the moments the weather changed, and a strip that says hour by hour whether each source was healthy. • Arrange every screen: drag the cards into your order, hide what you do not need, and do the same for Charts. • A 7-day forecast with a written narrative, tap a day for its full text, and a scorecard of how right the forecast has been at your station. • Charts with a wind rose, station comparison, and drag to inspect. Explore any past day. Records in under a second. Insights, a year heatmap and a Science page of derived numbers. ALERTS THAT ARRIVE • Thresholds on any field, evaluated on your server, by push and email even when the app is closed. • Weather watches with no setup: lightning nearby with an all clear, frost, heat, a fast pressure drop, a gust front, the first frost, low batteries and a sensor gone quiet. • Severe weather from the National Weather Service, one family at a time: mute floods and keep tornadoes, with a warning that sounds different from a watch. • Storm summaries after the rain ends: total, peak rate, temperature drop and top gust, as a push, an email card or both. • Live Activities on your Lock Screen for the rain countdown, a storm in progress, lightning nearby, a wind ramp, a freeze night and a heat day, and they reach the Apple Watch Smart Stack. • Quiet hours, a morning report and an evening outlook at the minute you choose, sky notes before sunset, and report emails in the look you pick. SHARE IT • Read only links for family with one tap setup, and Sites to keep every server you are given beside your own. • Your station on the shared map at maps.zasder.com with the location rounded as much as you like. • Send your readings to Weather Underground, PWSweather, Windy, Weathercloud, CWOP, Met Office WOW, AWEKAS and OpenWeatherMap. • Story cards from your own record, a public dashboard page to embed on your site, NOAA-style reports, and an AI assistant connected to your server. ON YOUR WRIST AND HOME SCREEN • Apple Watch app with configurable complications and a Big complication per reading. • Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets, editable per widget, a dashboard widget the size of a page, and a widget that follows the station you choose. • Siri: ask for any reading, the forecast, rain totals or records, in your units. Your stations appear in Spotlight. YOUR DATA, YOUR RULES • Bring years of history from Weather Underground, a WeeWX database, or any CSV, and export every reading to CSV. • Calibrate any sensor with an offset or a scale, typed in your units. • Units: °F or °C, mph, km/h, knots, m/s or Beaufort, in or mm, inHg or hPa. Light, dark, or automatic. Dynamic Type throughout. • Settings backed up to iCloud, the server's database backed up from the app, one-tap server updates. The backend is open source (MIT): https://github.com/volneydouglas/zasder-weather-backend Data goes only to your server and what you opt into. Optional tip jar via In-App Purchase, purely cosmetic; nothing is paywalled. Requires iOS 18.
Before It Strikes
This app provides real-time severe weather alerts and lightning prediction. It offers a 30-minute safety countdown after lightning strikes and displays high-resolution 3D radar. Receive instant National Weather Service warnings for any saved location.
- Lightning safety countdown
- Official NWS alerts
- Hi-res 3D radar
- Storm Center overview
- Heads-up storm notifications
- Apple Watch integration
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Severe weather, before it happens. You shouldn't find out about a storm when the first bolt hits. Before It Strikes watches the sky for you — pushing official National Weather Service warnings the instant they're issued, tracking storms headed your way, and counting down exactly when it's safe to go back outside. Free. Nationwide. Built for anyone who has to make the call to head inside. -Lightning safety countdown When lightning strikes within 10 miles, a 30-minute timer starts — and resets with every nearby strike, just like the 30-30 rule the pros use. When it reaches zero, you're clear. It lives right on your Lock Screen and Apple Watch. -Official NWS alerts, instantly Tornado, severe thunderstorm, and flash-flood warnings straight from the National Weather Service — for home, the lake house, the kids' school, anywhere you save. With a live expiration countdown, plain-English guidance, and every affected county. - Hi-res 3D radar Crisp, smooth radar you can tilt into 3D and zoom to your own street. 150+ live radar sites, nationwide — pan to any storm in the country. - Storm Center One screen that reads the sky: a 1–5 threat level, live lightning rate, the nearest strike, the next-6-hour outlook, and local storm reports as they land. - See it coming A heads-up when a storm is overhead or heading your way — with tornado, wind, and hail threats in plain words, before the first bolt. - On your wrist The all-clear countdown mirrors to your Apple Watch as a glowing ring — a glance tells you whether it's safe to go back out. - Follows you Save every place you care about, or let it track wherever you are. Loud when it counts, silent when it doesn't. No subscription. No paywall on safety. Every feature, free. A note on safety Official National Weather Service warnings are always the source of truth. Some features — such as lightning prediction and storm scoring — are experimental situational awareness and should never be used in place of official warnings or lightning-safety guidance. When in doubt, seek shelter.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Before It Strikes at none against Zasder Weather's 4. Before It Strikes also leads on ratings volume (7 vs 1). On price, rating, update cadence and ads 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
Both are free to download. Zasder Weather sells 4 one-off in-app purchases. Before It Strikes asks for nothing beyond the download.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for Zasder Weather against 5.0 for Before It Strikes. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Before It Strikes has 7 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two.
Zasder Weather ships an update every 5 days, Before It Strikes weekly. The most recent releases landed on November 3, 2026 and October 31, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Zasder Weather | Before It Strikes |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) | 5.0 (7 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | — | 100.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 1 | 7 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 5 days — better | Weekly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch — better | iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch |
| Requires iOS | 18.0 | 17.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 21 MB | 37 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Zasder LLC | Cody Negri |
Customer experience
Zasder Weather
Before It Strikes
In-app purchases
Zasder Weather
- Buy me a coffee$0.99
- Buy me a latte$4.99
- Buy me lunch$19.99
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- Buy me dinner$29.99
Before It Strikes
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Zasder Weather free?
Is Before It Strikes free?
Which has better reviews, Zasder Weather or Before It Strikes?
Do Zasder Weather or Before It Strikes have ads?
Which is updated more often, Zasder Weather or Before It Strikes?
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