Submarius vs Windy.
Windy is the best general-purpose marine weather visualizer on the planet — animated wind, swell, tide, radar, SST, and a serious multi-model engine. If you want a globe-spanning dashboard you can tweak for hours, nothing else comes close. Submarius reads many of the same signals, but turns them into a single verdict for spearfishing, diving, fishing, and surfing — plus a water-clarity forecast Windy doesn't offer. Different jobs. You can absolutely use both.
| Feature | Submarius | Windy |
|---|---|---|
| Single-number verdict (0–10) | ✓ | — |
| Water clarity forecast | ✓ dedicated model | — |
| Activity-specific weighting (spearo / dive / fish / surf) | ✓ 8 modes | One generic marine view |
| Bite score with transparent factors | ✓ | — |
| Animated wind particles | ✓ layer-aware palette | ✓ reference implementation |
| Multi-model weather (ECMWF / GFS / ICON / HRRR) | Open-Meteo composite | ✓ side-by-side comparison |
| Animated precipitation radar | ✓ (Pro) | ✓ |
| 10-day marine forecast | ✓ (Pro) | ✓ (free 3-day, paid 15-day) |
| Shark tag alerts (OCEARCH) | ✓ free forever | — |
| Buddy GPS + SOS | ✓ free forever | — |
| Post-dive visibility reports | ✓ H3-fuzzed privacy | — |
| Spot privacy (GPS fuzzing) | ✓ 1km by default | N/A |
| Pricing | $12.99 / $99 yr · $149 lifetime | Free or ~$35 yr Premium |
Who should use Windy?
Windy is the tool of choice if you want to see the weather itself: animated wind, swell, pressure, radar, SST, currents, all layered on a globe you can spin. It runs multiple models (ECMWF, GFS, ICON, HRRR, AROME) and lets you compare them side by side — invaluable for offshore boaters and sailors who've learned that no single forecast is right. The free tier is genuinely usable, which is rare in this category.
If your question is "what's the weather doing over the next 10 days across the globe?" — Windy wins. Full stop.
Who should use Submarius?
Submarius exists for a narrower question: "given my activity and my location, is today worth it?" Windy hands you a beautiful map and leaves the decision to you. Submarius does the weighting — tide and moon for fishing, swell period for surfing, water clarity for diving and spearfishing — and gives you one answer with every factor tappable for the full reasoning.
- Spearos and divers. Our water-clarity forecast is unique in this space. Windy shows wave height, which isn't a clarity proxy in bays or estuaries. We model Kd490 satellite turbidity, river plumes, and wave mixing — with explicit uncertainty.
- Conditions-first anglers. A Bite Score combining tide, moon, solunar windows, and pressure trend, transparent factor by factor.
- Anyone who wants safety features free. Shark alerts, SOS, buddy GPS — permanently unpaywalled. Windy doesn't include these at all.
- People who want a verdict, not a dashboard. Windy is a dashboard — a very good one. Submarius is opinionated on purpose.
The philosophical difference.
Windy is a visualization engine. It shows you the weather as it actually is — every model, every layer, every parameter — and trusts you to interpret. Submarius is a decision engine for specific coastal activities. It ingests similar inputs but weights them for the activity, blends in signals Windy doesn't measure (water clarity, solunar, shark tags, community dive reports), and produces a verdict.
Ask yourself: am I more often trying to understand the weather — or decide if the trip is worth it?
Can you use both?
Absolutely. Many marine users already run three or four apps — Windy for the synoptic picture, a tide app for the numbers, a viz-forecasting tool if one exists for their region. Submarius collapses most of that stack into one verdict, but Windy remains unmatched for the exploratory weather question. No lock-in. Use the right tool for the moment.