RainViewer reviews
What users love and hate, from real reviews
RainViewer is a radar nowcasting tool for people who need to catch the exact moment rain starts and stops over the next hour or two; it wins weather enthusiasts and people timing an outing, but its entire value rests on radar coverage and short-range accuracy — wherever those fail, the product instantly becomes useless.
What users love
The product sells timing, not weather: exactly when rain starts and stops
The core value isn't a weekly forecast but a precise window — "rain arrives in X minutes and lasts Y." That's why cyclists, motorcyclists and people planning a walk keep it: the app turns an abstract forecast into a concrete "go now or wait" decision. This narrow job makes it indispensable where general weather apps only give precipitation percentages.
Rain Viewer accurately shows rain coming in from some time/distance away, and accurately informs in time when it will arrive, how severe it is. It is a valuable app for me.
as a cyclists I can now with confidence plan my travel to work.
gives me a heads up before a storm hits so I know to get my cats inside and cover my windshield from trees and branches etc. great app.
Backward radar history is an underrated killer feature rivals don't offer
A hidden advantage: the ability to rewind the radar hours back and see what happened. It solves a real job — "I slept, did it rain?", "what passed over my field?" — and users explicitly say only RainViewer covers it while other apps show just the current moment. It's a rare differentiator that retains enthusiasts and farmers.
Listen. I fell asleep and wanted to know if it rained 4 hours ago... all my applications could NOT tell me. THIS ONE CAN! You have to go into settings. So I am keeping this very useful application.
Best app I've seen for radar history (free version 6 hrs, premium 48 hrs); forecast features have been improving.
Accurate both location and weather reports. Could save me with traveling, farming most of the time
Doppler velocities and depth make it a pro tool, not "just another weather app"
The product has a high end — weather enthusiasts and professionals who value what mass apps lack: Doppler velocities, detailed layers, European coverage. For this audience RainViewer is "number one in the category," and it forms the core of brand advocates and conviction-payers. It's a rare case where niche depth becomes a competitive moat.
Best meteorological app in Europe. One of the only few that have doppler velocities for EU. Truly amazing for weather enthusiasts!
Definitely the number #1 in WX category. Best app for regular users and meteorologists
great app, very detailed, unique features, good for adventure planing, army, ..
What users hate
Radar coverage is the on/off switch: outside the radar's reach, value drops to zero
The app is entirely tied to the meteorological radar network, and for huge areas — Africa, parts of Southeast Asia, scattered regions — there simply is no radar. For the user this isn't "less accurate," it's "doesn't work at all": they see a blank map and leave. RainViewer loses entire countries this way, not from bad UX but from the geography of infrastructure it doesn't control.
app looks great. unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any radar information for South Africa. (actually most of Africa)
They have excluded the whole of Africa from using this app to its full potential.
I'm using RainViewer to track weather in my area, Guiuan, but there's no radar coverage.
False rain alerts undermine the very job people install it for
The rain-start push is the headline feature, but when it fires on a clear sky, trust collapses faster than anywhere else: a user who relies on the alert for work gets the signal, looks out the window, and stops believing every notification. One false alert devalues a hundred correct ones, because the person can no longer tell which to trust.
Often notifies me of rain when there is no trace of rain on the radar or in the sky. Way too many false notifications.
Says it is raining, but it's not. This happens a lot. I liked it at first but now way too many alerts for nothing.
It's important to my job to be aware of upcoming precipitation. this app used to be good for this.
Ground-clutter near a radar station masquerades as "endless rain" — killing the forecast at the very center of coverage
A paradox: right next to the radar station itself the data can be worst. Artifacts shaped like the station's signature ring get read by the app as precipitation, so the user sees "it's raining all the time." This isn't random inaccuracy but systemic: the product doesn't filter ground clutter, so in the very zone of best coverage the forecast and alerts become unusable.
the radar data around Dublin Ireland shows complete noise in the obvious shape of the radar station north of Dublin, essentially making it seem like it is raining ALL THE TIME. The data is unusable for any prediction. The notifications are also noise due to this.
Downgraded for many false positive "moderate rain",on radar you could see only very shortly a cloud - probably a SW bug.
I have a permanent green half circle off Phuket
The 2-hour horizon is both the nowcasting hook and its ceiling: there is no product for "tomorrow"
The short horizon is the essence of nowcasting, but it also cuts off a whole use case: people come to plan a trip or event for tomorrow and hit a wall — "nothing visible beyond 2 hours." Anyone who needs to know whether it'll rain "sometime tonight" leaves for a standard forecast app. The product is strong in exactly one time window and helpless outside it.
Doesn't allow you to look at the radar more than 2 hours ahead. No use to me. I want to know if and when it's going to rain tomorrow.
Hard to use, no actual usable information. I'm planning a road trip over the next five days to a place I've never driven to.
you can't view more than 2h ahead in the free version but it does have overwhelming detail and accuracy
The app shows "precipitation yes/no" but not "how much" — losing users who need volume-based decisions
The radar map answers "will it rain" but not "how many millimeters," and gives no numeric wind or snow forecast. For some users that's not enough: they need quantitative data to decide (irrigation, construction, travel). The product deliberately stays visual-radar-first, and that repels the segment used to the numbers in standard weather apps.
This weather app does not give predictions for rainfall amounts or snow amounts. Just tells you that there might be precipitation. That's not really useful. We need predicted wind speeds and precipitation amounts for this to be a useful weather app.
I can't find how much precipitation is forecast for my location
I loved this app, but now it just shows me current weather. if I wanted to know that I would stick my head outside.
The animated map as the default landing screen confuses the mass user
The product greets a newcomer with a looping radar animation and a pile of unexplained layer options. The enthusiast loves it, but the ordinary user doesn't understand what they're looking at or where "current weather" is; they wanted a simple answer and got a pro dashboard. The lack of onboarding and a forced default screen turn the product's depth into an entry barrier.
the map options are overwhelming and not in layman's terms. why doesn't it default to current conditions?
why force us to view a forever-loading map animation as a default page? at least gave us a choice to select which page as a default one.
The app is good but there is no tutorlian on everything and I don't know how to switch radar sites but still it's good keep improving
The home-screen widget is the main daily-use channel — and the product's most fragile point
Many keep the app for the radar widget on their screen: it's the format that embeds the product into a daily habit without opening the app. But the widget regularly "drops out" with a connection error, disagreeing with what the app itself shows. When the habit channel breaks, the user loses daily contact with the product — and that hurts retention more than an in-app glitch.
Radar widget stopped working completely. Just says connection error. Uninstalled and reinstalled. Same thing.
Pro user. Old bug fixed. New bug. The Radar widget has a "Connection Error" message. All other widgets are working. The app works when opened.
this past year has been mainly wrong. also what is shown on the widget vs the app also is inconsistent
Coverage hinges on individual radar stations — and when one goes offline, the local user goes blind
Even in covered regions quality rests on one or two specific stations: in one city it works perfectly, in the next (where a station is offline or sparse) it misses the storm. The user doesn't realize it's a station issue and judges the app broken. This dependence on point-infrastructure makes the experience a geolocation lottery and pushes people to keep a backup app.
in Pattaya it works extremely accurately. quite impressive. in Chiang Mai it barely appears to work, particularly the radar. it does not show storms in progress. likely that additional radars are necessary.
Currently, only 5 stations are visible (Cebu, Catanduanes, Tagaytay, Hinatuan, and another) Knowing there are 15 Doppler radars in the Philippines, it would be great to include more
Sadly, radars in Indonesia stopped working as of lately, and I have no idea why.
Alerts can't be tuned by intensity — and the product decides for the user against their will
Users ask for an intensity filter ("don't wake me for drizzle") and instead get either an avalanche of alerts about every cloud, or "phantom" notifications for locations they deleted, plus a forced auto-pause-alerts feature they must keep turning off. The product strips control over the one thing it was installed for — when and about what it signals.
I would like to have a setting for the intensity of the rain (example: light rain) at notifications because I receive many notifications for drizzle.
I've since deleted that second location, but still getting notifications for it.
Please remove that "pausing alerts" feature you added. I'm tired of going to settings and enabling alerts over and over again.
Requests to track individual storm cells reveal an unmet ambition: people want the radar to become a tactical tool
The most engaged users ask not for "weather" but for tracking of individual storm cells, storm-motion arrows, hail probability and size, cloud height — i.e. to turn the product into a severe-weather tool. This demand signals untapped potential: the audience is ready for a more serious product than "rain yes/no," and currently leaves for where it exists.
are there any storm track arrows to track individual storm cells, with detailed information about the storm cells like hail chance and hail size.
Great app I'm glad I subscribed. Just missing one thing and that is displaying weather front boundaries. that is the only reason why I keep Wunderground.
thanks for this weather app this very helpful for me to monitor the live! track of storm
Background activity balloons into a trust break: for a weather app, privacy is a product risk
A weather app inherently needs location, which is exactly why the volume of background calls to dozens of third-party services reads as especially alarming: the user sees "contacts 25 companies" and uninstalls before giving the product a chance. Here privacy isn't legal fine print but the point where trust snaps at the start — for a geo-product, a direct churn-before-activation mechanism.
There is so much data tracking here and no easy way to turn it all off: it destroys all trust. It might be a good app but I will never know since I uninstalled straight away.
🛑 This app does not respect the users choices: Contacts up to 25 unnecessary services in the background, even when battery, notifications & background traffic are all restricted and the app is closed.
in the description they say location is only used for local forecast. But after installation you need to spend minutes to disable hundreds of vendors or you consent to give them your precise location.
Interstitial ads break the very moment of use: radar is watched in seconds, not minutes
This is the one allowed monetization card — and it's about mechanism, not a "too expensive" gripe. The product's essence is the quick glance: open, see how rain moves, close. A full-screen video ad interrupting that 2-second gesture physically prevents the job — the user can't read the map before the next clip. Interstitial monetization kills the exact micro-moment the whole value rests on.
Now there is an ad every 5 seconds. You don't even have the chance to see how the rain is moving before you get another ad.
Tells you what you want to know... Eventually. Too many ads and push for paid content based off free information. Now they have hidden the play buttons behind ad servers.
edit: app currently has functionality of pausing notifications so you will open the app and see the ad