Reddit’s new usage-based API pricing is now in effect, and while the potential costs forced many third-party apps to shut down, a handful of apps are switching to paid subscriptions to help pay for Reddit’s API fees. On Monday, the developer of a surviving iOS app, Narwhal, announced the app’s monthly fee: $3.99 a month.
The Narwhal developer, who goes by the name det0ur on Reddit, went into more detail about the fee. in a post on monday. “Reddit is now charging a substantial fee to use the API to power Narwhal,” det0ur wrote. “This fee will be tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, per month, depending on how many people subscribe. The sole purpose of this subscription is to cover the costs of using the API.” Monthly rate will take effect in a week or two.
You will have to pay monthly, at least for the moment. Users won’t be able to purchase a lifetime unlock because “the API costs Narwhal monthly,” says det0ur. Although det0ur is considering a way to pay annually, “for now, we’re a little worried that Reddit will increase the price of the API. To be safe, we will keep the monthly subscription.”
det0ur landed the $3.99 per month price after initially announcing a set of subscription tiers. The tiers, which ranged from $2.99 per month to $11.99 per month, gave you a certain number of API calls (one call is basically all Narwhal needs to access from Reddit and upload to the app) depending on how much pay. Under that model, if you ran out of API calls, you could pay more to refill your plan.
But shortly after announcing it, det0ur made a post announcing the possible change at that time to the monthly fixed rate. “Let’s face it, the 2003-style cell phone plan with monitored usage just isn’t great,” det0ur said in the post. “Who even wants to worry about what an API call is? Not to mention how much it will cost.”
