In Apollo’s case, it made a staggering 7 billion API requests, which puts the monthly amount owed to Reddit at $1.7 million and the annual fee at roughly $20 million, according to the app’s developer. Selig says if he boots every non-paying Apollo user, the average subscriber still makes over 300 API requests on a daily basis, something that costs $2.50 per month, which is currently more than the subscription price itself.
To recall, Apollo currently charges $1.49 per month for its paid subscription, the annual tier costs $12.99, and the lifetime premium package costs $50. Selig also made rough estimations about Reddit’s own revenue stream and concludes that the self-proclaimed internet’s first page would dramatically overcharge Apollo users, though Reddit hasn’t weighed in on his claims.
“With the proposed API pricing, the average user in Apollo would cost $2.50, which is 20x higher than a generous estimate of what each user brings Reddit in revenue,” Selig says in his Reddit post. He also says that Reddit is unwilling to adjust the API pricing for Apollo, which means either Selig pays up by whatever means he can or he sunsets the project. From the comments on Selig’s post, it appears that some Apollo users would ditch Reddit entirety if the third-party client dies, just the way many Twitter users migrated to alternatives like Mastodon or BlueSky.
