Apple / weather / NOAA MARINE FORECAST & WEATHER
REVIEW
NOAA Marine Forecast & Weather is a competent NOAA data wrapper, not a NOAA app.
A third-party iOS client that pulls public marine forecasts from the National Weather Service. Useful at the dock, easy to mistake for official.
BY THE APP COMRADE DESK · MAY 11, 2026 · 4 MIN READ
NOAA Marine Forecast & Weather
LW BRANDS, LLC
OUR SCORE
6.8
APPLE
★ 4.6
PRICE
$1.99
NOAA produces the marine forecasts every coastal boater in America relies on, and NOAA does not publish a consumer iPhone app. That gap is what apps like this one exist to fill. The forecasts inside are the same ones the National Weather Service publishes for free at weather.gov. The packaging is what you’re paying for in attention and ads.
That’s not a dismissal. Most people would rather tap a tide chart than parse a coded zone forecast in a browser. The honest question is whether this particular wrapper does that job well enough to keep on a phone that probably already has Apple Weather, a chartplotter app, and maybe Windy. The answer depends on where you boat — and how much you mind a banner ad above the wind speed.
The forecasts inside are the same ones the National Weather Service publishes for free. The packaging is what you're paying for in attention and ads.
FEATURES
The app reads NOAA's marine zone forecasts, coastal waters product, and offshore high-seas text bulletins and renders them inside an iOS shell. Pick a zone — Long Island Sound, Monterey Bay, Apalachicola to Suwannee River — and you get the current and next-period wind, sea height, visibility, and weather hazard text the National Weather Service writes for that polygon.
Tides come from NOAA's CO-OPS station data: highs and lows for the day with predicted heights, paired with the nearest station's name. There's a current-conditions block sourced from National Data Buoy Center stations when one is close enough — wind speed and direction, air and water temperature, wave height when the buoy reports it. Radar imagery overlays a Mapbox-style basemap.
No account, no sync, no premium tier surfaced at install. The free version runs with banner ads between sections and an interstitial when you switch zones; a one-time in-app purchase removes them.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
For a free wrapper, the data hygiene is reasonable. Marine zone identifiers match what NOAA actually publishes, the issuance timestamp is shown, and the tide-station picker uses the real CO-OPS station IDs rather than a curated subset. If you fish out of a small harbor that doesn't have a glossier branded app — most of them — this gets you the forecast in three taps.
The offline behavior is better than expected. Cached forecasts stay readable when you lose signal a few miles offshore, which is the situation the app exists to serve. The interface is plain enough that you can read it in direct sun on a wet deck without squinting.
ROOM TO IMPROVE
The name is the problem. "NOAA Marine Forecast & Weather" reads like a government product and isn't one. NOAA does not publish consumer iOS apps; this is a third-party developer repackaging public data. Nothing illegal about that — NWS forecasts are explicitly in the public domain — but a first-time user has no way to tell from the listing.
The ad density in the free tier is heavy for a tool you might check in a hurry before casting off, and the upgrade prompt appears often enough to feel like a tax on speed. Marine-radar animation is slower than dedicated weather apps charge real money for, and the lightning-strike layer some competitors include isn't here. There's no GRIB download, no route forecasting, no offshore wave model beyond what NWS already pushes as text.
CONCLUSION
Install it if you fish or sail close to shore, want the official NOAA marine text on a phone, and don't want to bookmark forecast.weather.gov in Safari. For passage-making, gear up to PredictWind or Windy — both charge for what they do, both do considerably more. And know what you're installing: this is a NOAA reader, not NOAA.