From 1 October 2025, all data within the ECMWF Real-Time Catalogue will be made open and available under the CC-BY-4.0 licence. Further details on the free and open dataset can be found here

The Service Charge Model will only apply to users who wish to:

Access higher temporal or spatial resolution data from the ECMWF Real-Time Catalogue than is included in the free and open dataset, or
Have the free and open dataset delivered directly to a delivery endpoint of their choice.

In these cases, a Service Agreement for the Provision of Open Data Products (Service: Real-time) must be signed.

If you are already a Real-time data user with an existing Agreement, the relevant changes to your Agreement and costing (notably, the removal of the Information Cost) effective from 1 October 2025 will already have been communicated to you.

Please note that for users accessing ECMWF Archive data or Advanced Web Services, the cost remains unchanged.

About the Service Charges

The Service Charges apply to users who want to have an Service Agreement for the Provision of Open Data Products (Service: Real-Time) :

The total fee of a Service Agreement for the Provision of Open Data Products (Service type: Real-time) is made up of two components:

Volume Band: In order to calculate the cost per year based on the volume of data requested, the volume of data produced (calculated before any compression) is divided into bands, and a cost per year is associated to every band, as illustrated in the table below.

Service Pack: Users will be required to select a Service Package. Each Service Package contains a selection of delivery services which will be provided together with the selected data.

For users when requesting/renewing an agreement with ECMWF:

Please note from 1 October 2025 the Small Business Discount no longer will apply to users who wish to have a Service Agreement for the Provision of Open Data Products (Service: Real-time)
Research users and Observation Data Providers, it will be at ECMWF discretion whether to waive Volume Band Cost and/or Service Package Cost. The services these users will get, will depend on the Service Package that will be assigned to them.

Summary of Total Service Charges

Volume Band	Average volume per day (GiB per day)	Basic (€) (€500 Basic Fee)	Bronze (€) (€500 +10% of Volume Charge)	Silver (€) (€500 +20% of Volume Charge)	Gold (€) (€500 +40% of Volume Charge)
1	0 - 1	500	Not available	Not available	Not available
2	1 - 10	1,500	1,600	Not available	Not available
3	10 - 100	7,500	8,200	8,900	Not available
4	100 - 500	33,500	36,800	40,100	46,700
5	500 - 1,000	Not available	66,500	72,500	84,500
6	1,000 - 4,000	Not available	Not available	108,500	126,500
7	4,000 - 8,000	Not available	Not available	216,500	252,500

Volume Band Cost

Volume band (number)	Average volume per day (GiB per day)	Cost per year (€)
1	0 - 1	0
2	1 - 10	1,000
3	10 - 100	7,000
4	100 - 500	33,000
5	500 - 1,000	60,000
6	1,000 - 4,000	90,000
7	4,000 - 8,000	180,000

Service Packs

ECMWF has revised its Service Packs to add new features and amend/enhance existing features. Amended and new features are highlighted in yellow.

Please note that organisations may only have 3 active Archive accounts (WebAPI accounts). If you have 3 Archive Licences and choose to adopt the Gold Service pack, you will not obtain a fourth account and may be asked to remove one of the older accounts.

Service or Feature	Basic	Bronze	Silver	Gold
Cost per year	500 EUR	500 EUR + 10% of Volume Charge	500 EUR + 20% of Volume Charge	500 EUR + 40% of Volume Charge
Volume Bands allowed (GB)	Volume Bands 1 - 4	Volume Bands 2 - 5	Volume Band 3 or higher	Volume Band 4 or higher
Office hours support (08:00 - 17:00 UTC)
24/7 Operational Support
Maximum number of destinations allowed (including Alias destinations)	Single destination	Single destination	Up to 2 destinations	Up to 4 destinations
Test data for cycle upgrades		(Test batch but not operational delivery)	(Including operational delivery)	(Including operational delivery)
User being able to access PREd and ECPDS
Changes to operational data requirements per year implemented by ECMWF Data Support Team (UK Office Hours) (per contract)	2	4	2	4
Changes to operational data requirements per year implemented by users themselves (per contract, not destination)	0	0	Unlimited	Unlimited
ECPDS - Max number of users			2	4
ECPDS - maximum number of configuration changes per contract year	2	4	6	16
ECPDS - Back-up host
ECPDS - Maximum number of hosts (per destination)	1	2	4	8
ECPDS - Compression
ECPDS - CCSDS Packing Optional
ECPDS - Custom Filenaming (including year in filename)
ECPDS - Key Rotation
ECPDS - Push delivery mechanism
ECPDS - Maximum number of parallel connections (per destination)	3	5	10	15
ECPDS - Directory targeting allowed
ECPDS - Pre-Schedule Delivery
ECPDS - File Retention Time (except seasonal/extended)	2 days	3 days	5 days	Custom (Up to 10 days)
ECPDS - FTP Pull (volume allowed proportionate to volume band)				(up to 100GiB)
PREd - Maximum number of users			1	2
Testing files as a new user	One-time push of a batch of files	One-time push of a batch of files	One-time push of a batch of files	One-time push of a batch of files
PREd - Test Feed Duration (for existing users)	10 days	10 days	10 days	10 days
PREd - Custom Test Feed duration			(Up to 15 days) Volume still counts to limit	(Up to 30 days) Volume still counts to limit
PREd - Publication request with approval (Mon-Thurs, UK office hours - as currently)
PREd - Publication request without approval (Mon-Thurs)
PREd - Publication request without approval 24/7
PREd - Max number of operational feeds (incl. test feeds) - per destination	5	15	30	60
PREd - Ability to create own feeds
PREd - Ability to change status of feeds to set normal, delay and pre-schedule
Archive Access via the ECMWF WEB API
Advanced Web Services (ecCharts and WMS layers)