One third-party Reddit app on iOS is going charge you $3.99 per month to use it


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 pivoting to paid subscriptions to help pay for Reddit’s API fees. On Monday, the developer of one surviving iOS app, Narwhal, announced the monthly fee for the app: $3.99 per month.
Narwhal’s developer, who goes by det0ur on Reddit, went into more detail about the fee in a Monday post. “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 a month depending on how many people subscribe. The only goal of this subscription is to cover the costs of using the API.” The monthly fee is set to come into effect in a week or two.
You’ll have to pay monthly, at least for the moment. Users won’t be able to buy a lifetime unlock because “the API has a monthly cost to Narwhal,” det0ur says. Although det0ur is considering a way to pay annually, “for now, we are a bit worried about Reddit increasing the price of the API. To be safe, we are going to keep it a monthly subscription.”
det0ur landed on 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 anything Narwhal needs to access from Reddit itself and load into the app) based on how much you paid. Under that model, if you ran out of API calls, you could pay more to top up your plan.
But soon after announcing it, det0ur made a post announcing the at-the-time potential switch to the flat monthly rate. “Let’s be real, the 2003-esque cell phone plan with monitored usage just isn’t great,” det0ur said in the post. “Who wants to even worry about what an API call is? Let alone how much it will cost.”
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 pivoting to paid subscriptions to help pay for Reddit’s API fees. On Monday, the developer of one surviving iOS app, Narwhal, announced the monthly…
Recent Posts
- The iOS 18.4 beta brings Matter robot vacuum support
- Philips Monitors is now offering a whopping 5-year warranty on some of its displays, including a gorgeous KVM-enabled business monitor
- The secretive X-37B space plane snapped this picture of Earth from orbit
- Beyond 100TB, here’s how Western Digital is betting on heat dot magnetic recording to reach the storage skies
- The end of an era? TSMC, Broadcom could tear apart Intel’s legendary business after 57 years by separating its foundry and chip design
Archives
- February 2025
- January 2025
- December 2024
- November 2024
- October 2024
- September 2024
- August 2024
- July 2024
- June 2024
- May 2024
- April 2024
- March 2024
- February 2024
- January 2024
- December 2023
- November 2023
- October 2023
- September 2023
- August 2023
- July 2023
- June 2023
- May 2023
- April 2023
- March 2023
- February 2023
- January 2023
- December 2022
- November 2022
- October 2022
- September 2022
- August 2022
- July 2022
- June 2022
- May 2022
- April 2022
- March 2022
- February 2022
- January 2022
- December 2021
- November 2021
- October 2021
- September 2021
- August 2021
- July 2021
- June 2021
- May 2021
- April 2021
- March 2021
- February 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- November 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- September 2018
- October 2017
- December 2011
- August 2010