Popular Reddit App Apollo Shutting Down on June 30

Popular third-party Reddit app Apollo will be shutting down as of June 30, Apollo developer Christian Selig announced today. The news comes after Reddit decided to start requiring developers to pay an unreasonable amount to access its API.

Apollo for Reddit Feature
Selig said in late May that Reddit is charging $12,000 for 50 million requests, and given the number of people that use Apollo, that would result in a $20 million per year charge that is unfeasible for Selig to pay.


Reddit has not budged on its pricing plans despite protests from users and Reddit moderators who rely on third-party apps, and the change will make it impossible for Apollo to continue to operate. "Going from a free API for 8 years to suddenly incurring massive costs is not something I can feasibly make work with only 30 days," Selig wrote.

Apollo is the most popular third-party Reddit app, primarily because of the work that Selig has put into it. He regularly adds new features and updates, and interfaces with users to get feedback on new functionality. Reddit maintains its own app, but it does not have the same feature options as Apollo, and users who rely on the Apollo app will be undoubtedly disappointed by this turn of events.

Over the last several days, Selig has attempted to work out a deal with Reddit, but it has been clear that Reddit has no plan to offer more reasonable API pricing. Reddit has in fact claimed that Selig tried to extort money from the company and is operating Apollo inefficiently, but has been unable to provide Selig with more information on how the app can be improved to further cut down on API usage. Selig does believe he could rewrite code to make Apollo more efficient in the long run, but Reddit has provided just 30 days for him to implement code changes, switch to a subscription model, migrate users, and make other updates. In addition to the cost and the negative interaction that he's had with Reddit leadership, Selig says that the timing is another reason that he's not able to make Apollo work with Reddit's new API pricing.

Selig has provided full details on why he has made the decision to shut down Apollo, plus he has transcripts and audio of his discussions with Reddit and what led to this decision.

Top Rated Comments

averagenerd81 Avatar
16 weeks ago

Imagine telling Wal-mart you will use their entire infrastructure for FREE to sell your own stuff and getting mad they now want to make you pay to use their store to sell your goods all while already charging users a monthly/yearly fee.
Not at all what is happening. Third party apps are fine with a fee to access it that is reasonable. Reddit waited until they had a huge cash cow, then decided "oh, we're totally going to start billing now" and picked an insane rate.

If you think this isn't an issue, that's fine, but your translation above isn't accurate.
Score: 174 Votes (Like | Disagree)
CEO Avatar
16 weeks ago
Wow, I hate to break it to Reddit, but a lot of these users won't be converting to the Reddit app. Personally, I'll probably just stop using Reddit all together.
Score: 119 Votes (Like | Disagree)
macduke Avatar
16 weeks ago

Imagine telling Wal-mart you will use their entire infrastructure for FREE to sell your own stuff and getting mad they now want to make you pay to use their store to sell your goods all while already charging users a monthly/yearly fee.
But they're not selling their own stuff. They're providing a much better UI/UX for reddit, and people are using it to use reddit. This is more like if someone made a much better shopping app for Walmart that was wildly popular and brought in a lot of customers for Walmart, and Walmart started charging the company behind the app exorbitant fees to continue making it, despite the fact that they put in a lot of hard work for years to make a much better app than Walmart and deserve to be compensated for that effort. Not to mention the app helps out Walmart a ton.
Score: 83 Votes (Like | Disagree)
GMShadow Avatar
16 weeks ago

Imagine telling Wal-mart you will use their entire infrastructure for FREE to sell your own stuff and getting mad they now want to make you pay to use their store to sell your goods all while already charging users a monthly/yearly fee.
It's more like if Walmart were only accessible through an unreliable Walmart bus network, and someone came along with a private car service that would ferry customers to the store, where they spent money, and then Walmart decided they didn't like that because their unreliable, trashy buses were just fine, and decided to demand the car service to pay $1000 every time one of their cars entered the parking lot.
Score: 68 Votes (Like | Disagree)
BigMcGuire Avatar
16 weeks ago
I deleted my Reddit account and explained why when it asked. Will not be asking for Apollo sub $ back.

Oh well, I've been wanting to focus my limited time on more worthwhile ventures anyway. Can't imagine anyone wanting to use the default app... This is what drove me to Apollo. Great app.

Hope Selig finds a new job!
Score: 63 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Blackstick Avatar
16 weeks ago
What a huge loss to the iOS Reddit community. The native app sucks.

I hope Christian can invest his time in some whiz-bang new apps for Vision Pro.
Score: 61 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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