What are the criteria to qualify for a 'Fee Waiver' for a Research Project with ECMWF?

Overview

The ECMWF Product Distribution Rules define the conditions governing the distribution and use of different ECMWF products. Since 01 October 2025, ECMWF has transitioned to an Open Data policy, under which all data is provided free of Information Cost and made available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) licence. Although ECMWF data/products fall under this licence, access to them is not automatically free, and service charges may still apply.

As part of this transition and now incorporated into the Product Distribution Rules is the introduction of the 'Fee Waiver' Scheme, which allows for the reduction or removal of service charges in specific cases. 'Fee Waivers' may be granted by ECMWF for Research Projects, provided the activities of the Research Project fulfil the following definition:

• Research Project: Any time-bound** project organised for non-commercial research purposes only, where an ongoing/continuous service based on ECMWF Products is not permitted without written consent from the Licensor. A necessary condition for the recognition of non-commercial purposes is that all the results obtained are openly available at delivery costs only, without any delay linked to commercial objectives, and that the research itself is submitted for open publication.

  ** Research Project Agreements (with Fee Waiver) cannot be longer than the duration of the project itself and up to a maximum of 3 years, whichever is shorter. Research Project Agreements (with Fee Waiver) may be renewed for research projects lasting longer than 3 years.

• Results: may include written reports, publications, presentations, and other forms of research output that do not involve the distribution or real-time Products or services based on real-time Products except where permission is granted.

Research Projects may be granted a full or partial 'Fee Waiver' for Real-time, Archive or Advanced Web Services. If applying for a 'Fee Waiver' for Archive/Advanced Web Services  only one access account will be provided per project.

Each Research Project which is granted a 'Fee Waiver' by ECMWF will have to sign a Service Agreement for the related service. With this Service Agreement an Addendum with Fee Waiver conditions will be attached.  Please see the a draft of the full Service Agreement with Fee Waiver conditions here: https://www.ecmwf.int/sites/default/files/2026-02/ecmwf-service-agreement-fee-waiver.pdf

'Fee Waivers' which are applied for by Research Projects are not granted automatically and must be approved by ECMWF Management. Please note that 'Fee Waivers' will not be granted where the application of Fee Waiver would:

• Distort competition

• Enable indirect commercial advantage

• Allow for prototyping potential service

• Provide a service

• Assist any future commercialisation

How to Apply for a 'Fee waiver' for a Research Project?

Application Process 

The application process for both Real-time, Archive or for Advance Web Services can take up to two weeks to process as the application for 'Fee Waiver' will have to be approved by ECMWF Management. For all the below applications you will first need to visit the Products Requirements Catalogue (https://products.ecmwf.int/shopping-cart/) and make an order for the relevant service. Once the order received by ECMWF Data Support, they will then contact you to acquire the following information:

Real-time data

• Name of the project

• Organisation and department research is affiliated with

• If you're a student, specify your degree programme and the name of your supervisor(s).

• Description of the project

• Project duration

• Project outputs

• URL of the project if available

• Description of why the Free & Open datasets are not useful for your research

• Rationale for requiring real-time (valid) data rather than archived (non-valid) data

Archive Data (Historical data) 

• Name of the project

• Organisation and department research is affiliated with

• If you're a student, specify your degree programme and the name of your supervisor(s).

• Description of the project

• Project duration

• Project outputs

• URL of the project if available

• Description of why the Free & Open datasets are not useful for your research.

Advanced Web Services

• Name of the project

• Organisation and department research is affiliated with

• If you're a student, specify your degree programme and the name of your supervisor(s).

• Description of the project

• Project duration

• Project outputs

• URL of the project if available

• Description of why Open Charts and Open WMS layers are not useful for your research.

Once the information above is received, the application will be made to ECMWF management. Once the outcome is known, this will be communicated to you. If successful ECMWF Data Support will explain the next steps.

 Alternatives

Unfortunately, ECMWF is unable to support every Research Project and at times management may decline the application of a 'Fee Waiver' for the service charges.

If this occurs we have a number of alternative datasets which may be useful: 

• ECMWF Open Data (available via ECMWF, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google Cloud)

• ERA5 (C3S global reanalysis)

• TIGGE

• S2S

• NCAR Repository (for North American research users)

• Google Weatherbench2 (includes ERA5, IFS HRES and IFS ENS analysis and forecasts from 2016-2022)

• Other ECMWF Datasets (Terms and conditions apply; please check each dataset)