Reddit’s New API Pricing Leads to Shutdown of Apollo, Other Third-Party Apps

Reddit’s New API Pricing Leads to Shutdown of Apollo, Other Third-Party Apps

Published: June 09, 2023

Reddit’s application programming interface (API) pricing plan has forced the closure of some popular third-party apps, who said that they wouldn’t be able to overcome the costs and burdens placed upon them.

Apollo for Reddit, rif is fun for Reddit (RIF), ReddPlanet, and Sync all announced that they would shut down on June 30 before the new API changes take effect on July 1.

The updates, which were announced in April, would mean that third-party developers would have to start paying for API access, among other changes. Using the API allows developers to access Reddit’s data and create third-party apps for users to browse, engage with, or moderate Reddit without having to use the official app or desktop site.

In a tweet, Apollo's developer, Christian Selig, said that “Reddit’s recent decisions and actions have unfortunately made it impossible for Apollo to continue.”


Earlier, Selig noted that the changes could cost him $20 million a year to run Apollo, which many users use to browse Reddit.

Similarly, in a message on r/redditisfun, RIF’s developer also announced that it would be shutting down due to the new terms and what it believed was the “hostile treatment of developers building on their platform.”

The developers of ReddPlanet, a client-side application for Windows 10 users, and Sync, which allows users to customize their views, also posted similar announcements on Reddit.

While the social news aggregator exempted makers of accessibility apps from the API pricing terms, it hasn’t been enough to quell the uproar.

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To protest the API model, many of Reddit’s biggest communities plan a blackout by setting themselves to private and blocking new posts on June 12 for 48 hours.

Amid the clamor, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman is slated to hold a highly anticipated ask me anything (AMA) session on Friday. According to the company, Huffman is expected to address the latest API updates, including accessibility, mod bots, and third-party mod tools.

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