The popular Reddit app Apollo will stop working on June 30 due because Reddit is moving to a paid API model for third-party apps.

• Developer Christian Selig has confirmed that his Reddit client Apollo will close down on June 30 over Reddit’s unfavorable, inflexible API pricing.
• “Reddit’s recent decisions and actions have unfortunately made it impossible for Apollo to continue,” he wrote on Twitter.
• He also took to Reddit to explain the reasoning behind the decision and linked to transcripts and audio of his discussions with Reddit.

Reddit client Apollo shutting down on June 30

In the Reddit post, Christian explains he started working on Apollo in 2015 out of frustration that there were no quality Reddit clients at the time.

Soon after launch, Apollo won people over with its highly customizable design and features. Although Reddit offers its own official app, it’s poorly designed and does not offer the same advanced features as Apollo.

“Today’s a much sadder post than that initial one eight years ago,” he wrote. “June 30 will be Apollo’s last day.” He added that discussions with Reddit “have deteriorated to an ugly point,” prompting him to make the difficult decision.

Thanks all for the outpouring of support, it’s made a rough day a lot better.

Per many requests I also added the Tip Jar back to the top of Apollo’s settings tab if you update the app. That’s incredibly kind of anyone to even consider but please feel no pressure.

— Christian Selig (@ChristianSelig) June 9, 2023

In April 2023, Reddit announced moving to a paid API model for third-party apps like Apollo. The company set the price for 50 million API requests at $12,000.

Christian says he’d need to pay Reddit almost $2 million/month, or over $20 million/year, given Apollo’s user base (in May, Apollo made 7 billion API requests).

“Apollo’s price would be approximately $2.50 per month per user, with Reddit’s indicated cost being approximately $0.12 per their own numbers,” he wrote. “A 20x increase does not seem based in reality to me.”

$20 million/year

$20 million/year is an opportunity cost Christian could only handle if passing the cost to his users in the form of pricier subscriptions, which he didn’t want to do.

Besides, Reddit offer him just 30 days to implement the changes and transition users to subscriptions which aren’t enough to “rewrite large parts of my app to lower total requests, while also changing the payment model, transitioning users and ensuring this is all properly tested and gets through app review.”

Apollo for Vision Pro

Interestingly, Apollo was mentioned several times during Apple’s 2023 WWDC keynote. “Even during the Vision Pro announcement, Apple showed Apollo as one of the existing apps compatible with the headset,” he said.

Met Phil! pic.twitter.com/hbXoQzeUYH

— Christian Selig (@ChristianSelig) June 5, 2023

Well, so much about running Apollo on the Vision Pro. Apollo is currently available on the App Store and has an Editor’s Choice badge. The most recent version has a Tip Jar functionality for those wishing to support Christian’s work.