About AQI Now
Making real-time air quality data accessible, understandable, and actionable — for 48,000+ cities across 242 countries.
Our Mission
Billions of people breathe polluted air every day — yet most don't have easy, real-time access to data about what's in their air or what it means for their health.
AQI Now was built to fix that. We aggregate data from the best available sources, compute both international and local air quality standards side by side, and translate abstract numbers into concrete health guidance you can act on.
We believe awareness is the first step toward change. When anyone can instantly check their city's air quality — and understand what it actually means for their lungs — it creates the pressure for policy action, cleaner technology, and healthier communities.
Scale & Coverage
Coverage spans India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, South Korea, Japan, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, the US, UK, Germany, France, and many more. India receives special treatment with CPCB station-level readings and both NAQI and US EPA indexes computed per city.
Our Journey
2023
Project launched
Started as a personal project to track air quality around home in India. First version covered a few hundred cities.
2024
Global expansion
Scaled to 40+ countries using Open-Meteo CAMS data. Added daily city rankings, historical archive, and city comparison.
2025
48,000+ cities indexed
Extended coverage to 242 countries and territories. Launched pollutant detail pages, weather integration, and 21-article blog.
2026
Enriched city profiles
Added seasonal narratives, geographic context, and FAQs for 3,600+ cities and descriptions for 1,300+ states and all 242 countries.
What We Provide
- Real-time AQI for any city — Live pollutant readings from Open-Meteo CAMS, the open global air-quality model, with consistent coverage across 240+ countries.
- Dual AQI standards side-by-side — US EPA AQI and India NAQI (CPCB) displayed together so you can compare local and international benchmarks.
- Enriched city profiles — 3,600+ cities have hand-curated seasonal air quality narratives, geographic context, and 5 FAQs each — written with local accuracy rather than generic descriptions.
- Pollutant detail pages — Deep-dive pages for PM2.5, PM10, NO₂, SO₂, CO, and O₃ with health effects, sources, safe guidelines, and measurement methods.
- Daily city rankings — Most-polluted and cleanest rankings for India and 40+ countries, refreshed three times per day from live pipeline data.
- Historical archive — Searchable archive of daily AQI snapshots for every city, letting you compare today's air to past readings.
- City comparison — Compare air quality across multiple cities side-by-side — useful for travellers, researchers, and curious minds.
- Integrated weather forecasts — Temperature, humidity, wind speed, and UV index alongside AQI so you get the full picture before heading outdoors.
- State & country dashboards — Regional overviews for 1,300+ states and 242 countries — zoom out from individual cities to understand broader pollution patterns.
- Air quality blog — 21 in-depth articles covering air quality science, seasonal patterns, indoor pollution, and practical protective measures.
Data Sources
- Open-Meteo CAMS Air Quality — Free, open-source CAMS global air-quality model (~45 km resolution). Primary live AQI source for every city worldwide — India and international.
- CPCB Station Readings — India's Central Pollution Control Board monitoring station data. Adds station-level depth on Indian city pages and powers our analytics hub.
- Open-Meteo Weather API — Open-source weather data (temperature, humidity, wind, UV index) shown on every city page alongside air quality.
- Google Air Quality API (optional) — Supported as an alternate live AQI source via a runtime flag. Currently kept off to manage cost; can be re-enabled per environment.
All AQI calculations — breakpoints, linear interpolation, unit conversions — are documented in detail on our methodology page.
Who's Behind This
Masoom Kumar
Founder, AQI Now
I'm a technology professional based in India, working at the intersection of data engineering and product development. I built AQI Now in 2023 after noticing how difficult it was to get a simple, trustworthy answer to a basic question: how bad is the air right now? Most tools were either too technical, too slow, or too geographically limited.
Living in India — where air quality crises are a seasonal reality — gave me both the motivation and the local context to build something genuinely useful. What started as a side project to monitor a handful of Indian cities has grown into a platform covering 48,000+ cities across 242 countries.
The engineering behind the site involves real-time data pipelines from multiple sources, dual AQI standard calculations (EPA + NAQI), a SQLite-backed city database of 48,000+ entries, and enriched health narratives for over 3,600 cities. Every feature was built to answer a question real people actually ask — not to show off technical complexity.
I believe air quality awareness is a public health issue and that everyone deserves access to clear, actionable data — regardless of where they live or how technically savvy they are.
Get in Touch
Have questions, data corrections, or want to collaborate? Reach out through LinkedIn or the feedback widget on any city page.
LinkedIn: Masoom Kumar
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