Reddit’s new policy of charging for API access may kill off some of the most popular third-party apps, despite earlier promises to the contrary.
Reddit announced plans to charge for access to its API in April, but the company’s efforts seemed to mainly target companies that were using Reddit’s data to train AI models, as well as similar uses that did not benefit Reddit or its users.
“The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” co-founder Steve Huffman said at the time. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”
In fact, Huffman said companies making products that help improve the Reddit experience, and especially academic and noncommercial apps, would continue to have free access to the API.
Christian Selig, developer of the popular Apollo Reddit client, posted a message outlining how Reddit’s new pricing will likely be the death of his app:
Hey all,
I’ll cut to the chase: 50 million requests costs $12,000, a figure far more than I ever could have imagined.
Apollo made 7 billion requests last month, which would put it at about 1.7 million dollars per month, or 20 million US dollars per year. Even if I only kept subscription users, the average Apollo user uses 344 requests per day, which would cost $2.50 per month, which is over double what the subscription currently costs, so I’d be in the red every month.
I’m deeply disappointed in this price. Reddit iterated that the price would be A) reasonable and based in reality, and B) they would not operate like Twitter. Twitter’s pricing was publicly ridiculed for its obscene price of $42,000 for 50 million tweets. Reddit’s is still $12,000. For reference, I pay Imgur (a site similar to Reddit in user base and media) $166 for the same 50 million API calls.
Selig went on to say that the Reddit reps he spoke with indicated there was little, if any, flexibility with the pricing.
Apollo is an outstanding Reddit client, one that elevates the Reddit experience, and it will truly be a shame if Reddit’s new policy leads to its demise.