Reddit is Fun / Sync / Relay developers

In April 2023, Reddit announced that it would begin charging for access to its data API, which had been free to developers since 2008. The change triggered the shutdown of several long-running third-party mobile clients that millions of users had relied on for years, and it became one of the defining controversies in Reddit's recent history. Although the apps and their developers were independent, coverage tended to frame the story around the products themselves rather than the individuals behind them.

The scale of the new pricing was made concrete by Apollo developer Christian Selig, who said on May 31, 2023 that he had been quoted roughly US$12,000 per 50 million requests, implying costs on the order of US$20 million per year to keep his app running. Other developers said their economics were similar. Andrew Shu, developer of the popular Android client 'rif is fun for Reddit' (RIF), said that while his exact numbers might differ, the cost 'would be in the same ballpark,' and he cited Reddit's 'hostile treatment of developers building on their platform' as a central reason for closing the app.

When the new policy took effect on June 30, 2023, a wave of clients went dark on the same day. RIF shut down, as did Sync for Reddit, developed by Laurence Dawson, along with Apollo and BaconReader. Reporting at the time noted that RIF's developer pointed out the app generated comparatively modest revenue yet faced API costs comparable to far larger clients, underscoring how the flat per-request pricing fell hardest on small, independent teams. Relay for Reddit took a different path, moving toward a subscription model that let it attempt to absorb the per-user API costs rather than shutting down immediately.

The shutdowns fed directly into the broader June 2023 Reddit blackout, in which thousands of subreddits went private or restricted in protest. The episode is widely remembered as a turning point in Reddit's relationship with the developer community that had helped build its ecosystem, and it remains a reference point in debates about platform control, API monetization, and the precarious position of third-party developers who build on someone else's service.