Goodbye, Good Reddit Apps

To kick off June, the world of 3rd party reddit apps was put on notice – prepare to pay by the end of the month or go away, they were essentially told. And well, it’s now June 30 and very few appear willing to pay. The end has come for some of the best reddit apps.

For those catching up on this news today, this post has the details about reddit’s new stance on charging for API access from 3rd party apps and why most can’t afford the new pricing. Basically, reddit decided to charge a fee per API request that apps simply can’t afford. Popular apps like Apollo on iOS believe it would cost them $20 million per year to operate under this new API request fee structure. Other apps, including many on Android, have acknowledged they would face similar challenges. Rather than attempt to try and cover the costs, they will all just shut down.

Android apps including Sync for Reddit, Baconreader, and Reddit is Fun previously confirmed they would shutdown. My favorite reddit app, Boost for reddit, announced yesterday that it was pulling the plug as well. DAMN.

Protests in major subreddits have run for several weeks now in response to the API changes that are causing apps to call it quits, including r/Android, which has yet to fully re-open. At first, many subreddits switched to private to make reddit mostly useless, but Reddit’s bosses have become hostile to the situation, leaving moderators no choice but to re-open even if in limited capacity. I get the feeling this situation isn’t even close to being over.

With all of these major reddit apps closing down, we are essentially forced to use the official reddit app or leave reddit entirely. Almost all of the apps I mentioned above plan to shut their doors tomorrow, July 1 or at some point today.

Goodbye, good reddit apps.