Reddit API update
Today I launched Apollo, a 3rd-party client for Reddit, and saw, to my dismay, an update from Apollo’s developer.
The following is an excerpt from his post on the Apollo App subreddit:
… 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.
As for the pricing, despite claims that it would be based in reality, it seems anything but…
I watched Twitter practically eradicate its ecosystem of 3rd-party clients overnight, and at the back of my mind, wondered if Reddit, my ad-supported social media of choice, might, some day follow suit. And it sure seems like that day is sometime around today.
Part of the value of Reddit lies in the comments of a post, or any post for that matter. Just scroll down to read some of the 10k comments.
And a similar sentiment from some of the folks I’m subscribed to:
It’s pretty bad, to say the least.