Reddit Will Charge Developers Thousands of Dollars to Access Its Data and Content
With the new API pricing, developers would have to pay thousands of dollars to access Reddit’s data and content. This decision of Reddit would help diversify its source of revenue.
The company asked developers to pay $12,00 per 50 million requests according to a post.
“I’ll cut to the chase: 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.”
Developers use APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) for a variety of reasons. For one, APIs provide developers with a way to access the functionality and features of external services, libraries, or platforms. By using APIs, developers can leverage pre-built components instead of building everything from scratch, saving time and effort.
Reddit has an ecosystem of apps, services, and plugins. They are created by amateur and seasoned developers.
Twitter Started It
Since Elon Musk acquired Twitter, API costs started to gain greater attention. The increasingly popular AI-powered tools also increased API costs. The reason for this is that modern AI programs utilize large language models. They train themselves on web-based content. These would include posts generated by users on social media sites, including Reddit and Twitter.
When Twitter announced it would charge $42,000 for 50 million requests, users and developers were outraged. Even though Reddit promised developers that it would not charge them with that kind of extreme pricing, $12,000 is still too much to take.
Apollo paid $166 for API requests from Imgur, an online image-sharing service.
Many companies charge developers for API use. However, Reddit is quite different because the majority of its revenue comes from advertising. Unfortunately, it struggled to make money from its active user base.
The digital ad market is slowing down. Reddit may be facing a lot of pressure to boost its revenue if it wants to push through its IPO filing.
The company is committed to the new pricing.
But many think that the steep pricing is not for the company to make money. It was clear that no one can pay for it. However, the reason might be that the company wants to crush third-party alternatives. In that way, users would be forced to use the official app. Unfortunately, many users prefer third-party apps because they don’t want to watch ads on the Reddit app or pay for Premium.
Many social media platforms allowed developers access to their APIs without paying anything. But it was only possible during the early days of social media.
With APIs, developers could access your data. Twitter, Reddit, and other platforms use your data for monetization through advertisers. So, which platform will be next to charge developers with exorbitant fees?
