Reddit to Charge for API
Christian Selig (tweet, Mastodon, Hacker News, AppleInsider):
Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing. Bad news for third-party apps, their announced pricing is close to Twitter’s pricing, and Apollo would have to pay Reddit $20 million per year to keep running as-is.
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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.
Right now Apollo is free to use, but offers a Pro tier with a slew of additional features and fun stuff for a one-time payment of $5, and an Ultra tier with even more for a $13/year subscription. If Reddit goes through with this API pricing, Apollo’s free and Pro tiers would be unsustainable, and the Ultra subscription would have to cost at least $50 or $60 per year.
As with Twitter, there is a path for Reddit to walk that allows Selig to build a sustainable app business and for Reddit to be compensated for its service. But this isn’t it.
I’m an Apollo for iPad user and pay for the highest tier to compensate the developer for their time. I also pay Reddit for their premium service to compensate them for their time and so I don’t see any ads.
Why can’t Reddit just require Apollo only work with users who are paying for Reddit Premium? Introduce an Ads-API that’s free to Apollo and charge the end user to disable ads?
I had the same thought about Twitter, but I guess it’s more about control or LLMs than money.
NetNewsWire has special support for Reddit — we use the Reddit API.
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We already went through this with Twitter. Not happy to be doing it again.
To be fair, I feel like Reddit should pay @christianselig $20 million to help them improve their shitty app.
Apps like Apollo have made Reddit usable for millions of people. This is an idiotic move.
Tweetbot was the one way I could enjoy reading the Twitter timeline. Without it, my Twitter use is reduced to occasional glances at individual profiles.
Apollo and old.reddit.com are enjoyable ways to use Reddit. The latter’s days are presumably numbered, and the former soon won’t be able to afford paying for the API.
The app is awful, and the new website is worse than the old one.
The other big problem about this Reddit stuff, is that a third party client is about the only efficient way a screen reader user can use it. Blind screen reader users will basically be prohibited from using Reddit from now on.
It’s amazing that Reddit, having watched the fallout after Twitter killed off their third party developers, would go on to say, “You know what, that’s an excellent idea and we should do it too!”
The thing that bothers me most about this Reddit stuff is the Gaslighting. If you are going to kill off all clients, just own it. Don’t lie and say you value 3rd party clients and then act like they should be thankful for your over priced, unsustainable access plans.
At least they talked with him. 🙄
HOW MUCH IS APPLE GONNA CHARGE ME TO USE THE PING API
Previously:
- Twitter Makes It Official
- Improved Reddit Search
- Google Search Is Dying
- Reddit Raises Even More
- Reddit’s Disrespectful Design
Update (2023-06-02): See also: Luke Plunkett (via Hacker News).
