The developer added:
In order to develop proper third-party apps, a larger investment must be made using paid Reddit APIs. However, in order to encourage the participation of such developers, Reddit's paid API policy must be established in a more reliable and transparent manner. At a minimum, there should be an open development platform and API pricing policy.
Nara for Reddit
Nara now costs $3.99/month. When announcing the change, the developer going as Miloco on Reddit
explained that it wasn't possible to charge a one-time fee "due to the usage-based fee model Reddit uses to monetize their API."
"The more you use the app, the larger the fee I am required to pay. A one-time fee would eventually run out, so a monthly subscription is the only solution," Miloco said in September.
At the time, Miloco expressed hope that the fee could cover Reddit's fees and leave the developer "with a little left to live off."
Nara's dev didn't respond to my request for comment.
Now for Reddit
Now for Reddit is also run by Miloco. In September, the developer
announced version 6.0 as a beta subscription update. The app is on version 6.0.3 as of this writing. Now used to be free but moved to a subscription model of $3.99/month.
When announcing the app, Miloco wrote on Reddit that since subscribers will get unlimited API calls, there's a chance that Miloco's Reddit bill may exceed the app's subscription revenue.
"I expect 'power' users (those of you who use the app for hours a day) may run up an API bill which is greater than $3.99/month. However, I also expect some users may use the app less, and overall subscription revenue should be enough to cover Reddit's API bill," Miloco said.
Relay for Reddit
Formerly free, Relay is now available under six pricing tiers, ranging from Bronze (1,350 API calls/month, or about 30 minutes/day,
according to Relay's dev, known as DBrady on Reddit) to three unlimited tiers (Platinum, Diamond, and Ruby).
DBrady
provided a breakdown of how the subscription fees are distributed by using the three cheapest tiers as examples:
- Bronze ($1/month): Relay gets $0.52 / Reddit gets $0.33 / Google gets $0.15
- Silver ($2/month): Relay gets $0.97 / Reddit gets $0.73 / Google gets $0.30
- Gold ($3/month): Relay gets $1.09 / Reddit gets $1.46 / Google gets $0.45
In a September post announcing the changes, DBrady said, "If you don't use all of your API calls over the month, then Reddit's portion decreases and Relay's amount increases."
DBrady added that for users on unlimited plans, "there is a point at which the cost to Relay is not covered by the purchase price." The dev said the break-even point is about 580 calls/day on the Platinum plan, for example.
DBrady didn't respond to a request for comment explaining why there is a subscription tier that could cost the developer money. But it's possible that, like other developers in this story, DBrady is hoping payments from users who don't use all their API calls will balance things out.
Relay's move to subscriptions has included enabling users to understand their individual API usage. Users can now see a circle graphic (you can see an example
here) and other information explaining their API usage habits with the app, including their average number of daily API calls.
Similar to Narwhal, Relay remained open after Reddit's July 1 changes for some time without charging a subscription. The developer hasn't specified how this was possible, but based on Narwhal developer Harrison's experience, it's plausible that Reddit worked out a deal with Relay's developer to could keep the app open while the subscription model was being worked on.
Apps not heavily impacted by Reddit's API rules
Reddit's API policy changes meant that most popular third-party apps required drastic business model changes to survive. However, there are
apps that remain available for free or minimal cost. I spoke to developers of a few such apps to get insight into the workarounds that keep their apps floating without requiring them to pay Reddit.
Alerts for Reddit
Alerts for Reddit is available for free. How? Differing from many apps in this article, Alerts doesn't browse Reddit's content, instead only alerting users about notifications delivered to their Reddit accounts.
Alerts is able to operate under the API policy's free tier, which
allows for 1,000 API calls per 10 minutes per app. Even 100 users would surpass that limit on a heavily trafficked app, such as Apollo, but not on Alerts.
Amanda O'Neal, Alerts' developer, explained via email:
I'm doing all my API calls on my server, where I am able to optimize. For example, if one user wants me to check the subreddit r/BuildAPCSales for new posts, that's the same number of Reddit API calls as if a million users wanted me to check that subreddit for new posts—I still only have to check the subreddit once every few minutes.
O'Neal also leverages Reddit's MultiReddit feature, which groups subreddits in order to check multiple subreddits simultaneously.
"Using optimizations like these, I can send all the notifications I need to send without reaching the free API limit, and I could scale up my user base significantly without having to worry about hitting that limit," she said.
O'Neal hasn't worked directly with Reddit like the developers of the above apps have. The app is free to use, but you can pay (either a monthly or annual subscription or a one-time fee) for more than three notification subscriptions. Alerts is profitable, "but not by a lot," O'Neal told me.
O'Neal thinks Alerts could stay open for the long haul, but the biggest obstacle to that is the possibility of future Reddit rule changes.
"For example, if they removed the free tier of the API and instead charged $0.24/1,000 API requests across the board, I would need to look into either charging users money for the basic features of my app or shutting my app down," she said.
The dev also pointed to the risk of Reddit removing Old Reddit API features. "Of course, Reddit has complete control over which apps are allowed to use their API at all—they could shut me down on a whim," she said. "Though, I haven't heard of them doing that to apps unless they are breaking Reddit's rules in some way."
Sink It for Reddit
Sink It launched in late June for free. The app used to be a subset of Rekt, a paid-for app by Tony Sundharam. Sundharam told me via email that he decided to turn the subset into the separate Sink It app "when Reddit started their shenanigans with the API."
Sink It can survive as a free app because it doesn't use Reddit's API. It's a browser extension that "takes the web version of Reddit on iOS' Safari and upgrades it by adding various features (rainbow comments, Apollo-style comments... OLED black mode, etc.) and removing nuisances," Sundharam said.
"Because Sink It has access to the underlying structural code, we can change the behavior and design to suit our needs," he said. "At the moment, the plan is to only progressively enhance, and not outright change, the design to avoid getting on Reddit's bad side."
Sundharam is not worried about Reddit shutting Sink It down because "due to the nature of the architecture I've employed, the only way to reliably kill Sink It is to completely stop serving the web version of Reddit." Sundharam described the app as "
ramen profitable," even though its only monetization scheme is voluntary donations.
So why aren't there more apps that work like this since Reddit made API access so costly?
Sundharam thinks it's because "it's a
lot of work."
"Unlike API-based apps, which can be written once and forgotten about, my approach requires constant work to keep things running smoothly," he said. "End of the day, you're always aiming at a moving target, as Reddit can change their interface/design at any time. For example, before Christmas, Reddit made some pretty big changes which necessitated a painful rewrite of a few features."
Yesterday For Old Reddit
Yesterday for Old Reddit wasn't hamstrung by Reddit's API rule changes. The app works as a browser extension to modify Old Reddit's UI client-side and doesn't make any calls to Reddit's API. The app launched (as Old Reddit for Safari) in January 2022 and costs $2.99.
"The only thing that changed during the API rule changes for me is a lot of Apollo users migrated to my app and wanted some of their favorite features from Apollo," Ritinkar Pramanik, the app's developer, told me.
Since Reddit's API policy change, Yesterday's average monthly downloads have increased six-fold (although its dev notes that the original baseline was "low"). Factoring in time spent working on the app, Pramanik told me he breaks even with Yesterday and believes it should be open long-term, as long as people continue using it and Reddit's old UI remains:
The one thing that would jeopardize the app's existence is if Reddit completely retires their old UI and forces everyone to migrate to their new UI, which would cause them to lose a lot of Old Reddit loyalists like myself. It might happen—I don't know.
:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23985506/acastro_STK024_02.jpg "The Reddit logo over an orange and black background")
