Apollo developer must pay $20 million per year for Reddit API
The developer of the popular Apollo app for iOS writes that he will have to pay twenty million dollars a year to use the Reddit API. Previously, access to that API was free. Reddit itself has not yet announced prices for the API.
According to the Apollo developer, the price to be paid for the API depends on how much it is used. For 50 million API requests, Reddit would charge $12,000, he writes based on a conversation with the company. For the same amount of requests, he says he pays $166 on Imgur. Twitter reportedly charges a minimum of $42,000 for API access to 50 million tweets.
The developer, Christian Selig, states that Apollo made about seven billion requests to the Reddit API last month, which would now equate to a cost of $1.7 million per month, or just over $20 million per year. According to the developer, the price is ‘not even close to reasonable’. He says the average user now costs him about $2.50 a month, which he says is “twenty times higher” than what Reddit is missing out on as a result of users using its unofficial Reddit app.
According to Selig, Reddit is not flexible with pricing. Even if he only gives paying users access to the app, he says he will not be able to pay for the API with the current subscription prices. He still has to “think for a few days” about what this means for the future of Apollo, he says to The Verge. The app maker hopes that an arrangement can still be reached ‘that satisfies both parties’.
A Reddit spokesperson told The Verge that the social media platform charges money “per thousand API requests” and that the amount is “as fair as possible”, but the exact prices are not discussed. Furthermore, the spokesperson said that Reddit “works with third-party apps to help them improve efficiency, which can significantly reduce costs.”
Last month, Reddit stated in its terms and conditions that the company would impose ‘limits’ on the free use of its API. When those limits are reached, developers have to pay. Reddit has not clarified what exactly those limits mean.