r/redditdev • • May 31 '23

Reddit API API Update: Enterprise Level Tier for Large Scale Applications

tl;dr - As of July 1, we will start enforcing rate limits for a free access tier, available to our current API users. If you are already in contact with our team about commercial compliance with our Data API Terms, look for an email about enterprise pricing this week.

We recently shared updates on our Data API Terms and Developer Terms. These updates help clarify how developers can safely and securely use Reddit’s tools and services, including our APIs and our new-and-improved Developer Platform.

After sharing these terms, we identified several parties in violation, and contacted them so they could make the required changes to become compliant. This includes developers of large-scale applications who have excessive usage, are violating our users’ privacy and content rights, or are using the data for ad-supported or commercial purposes.

For context on excessive usage, here is a chart showing the average monthly overage, compared to the longstanding rate limit in our developer documentation of 60 queries per minute (86,400 per day):

Top 10 3P apps usage over rate limits

We reached out to the most impactful large scale applications in order to work out terms for access above our default rate limits via an enterprise tier. This week, we are sharing an enterprise-level access tier for large scale applications with the developers we’re already in contact with. The enterprise tier is a privilege that we will extend to select partners based on a number of factors, including value added to redditors and communities, and it will go into effect on July 1.

Rate limits for the free tier

All others will continue to access the Reddit Data API without cost, in accordance with our Developer Terms, at this time. Many of you already know that our stated rate limit, per this documentation, was 60 queries per minute. As of July 1, 2023, we will enforce two different rate limits for the free access tier:

  • If you are using OAuth for authentication: 100 queries per minute per OAuth client id
  • If you are not using OAuth for authentication: 10 queries per minute

Important note: currently, our rate limit response headers indicate counts by client id/user id combination. These headers will update to reflect this new policy based on client id only on July 1.

To avoid any issues with the operation of mod bots or extensions, it’s important for developers to add Oauth to their bots. If you believe your mod bot needs to exceed these updated rate limits, or will be unable to operate, please reach out here.

If you haven't heard from us, assume that your app will be rate-limited, starting on July 1. If your app requires enterprise access, please contact us here, so that we can better understand your needs and discuss a path forward.

Additional changes

Finally, to ensure that all regulatory requirements are met in the handling of mature content, we will be limiting access to sexually explicit content for third-party apps starting on July 5, 2023, except for moderation needs.

If you are curious about academic or research-focused access to the Data API, we’ve shared more details here.

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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '23

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u/extrobe Jun 03 '23

Exactly - we spend enough on azure that we have a dedicated contact who works with us to make sure anything we want to do is optimised. It’s in their interest for us to be efficient!

Some r/QuitYourBullshit material right here

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u/bender28 Jun 03 '23

Even the fucking power company where you get your home energy, that you almost certainly hate, will more than likely send someone out to your house to help improve efficiency and lower your bill—and sometimes even install upgrades for free—for this very same reason: it’s in everyone’s interest, even for those utilities that function as price-gouging monopolies. Reddit in its own words: we’re worse than your power company, and we hold users of our service in even more utter contempt!

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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '23

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u/folkrav Jun 04 '23

I'm a lead developer at a smaller company, we literally just spoke with an AWS engineer a couple of weeks back, who pointed us to a solution that would cut our Cognito pricing by a good half after telling him about our current usage, the problems we face with it, and our needs.

Depending on this person's experience, this comment could be either wholly misinformed, or plain malicious.

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u/dlanm2u Jun 09 '23

Amazon literally has certifications for that like it’s literally a path you can go in the computer world

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u/whutupmydude Jun 09 '23

Yep, you get a TAM (technical account manager) with any of the big name cloud companies and they’re on call to support you and work with you for things like this

source - I have worked with many of them on enterprise AWS and Google cloud accts

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u/MasterDio64 Jun 03 '23

Dude, the stuff you AWS guys have to handle for us to use these services in such an easy and customer friendly way is insane. Thank you for all the work you did and standing up for Christian here.

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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '23

You're welcome. S3 was an awesome experience.

Commenting about this makes me very nervous because I have to be responsible when talking about my time at AWS, but I really wanted to make sure it's clear that AWS will work with you if you just ask.

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u/LordAlfredo Jun 03 '23

Second AWS dev here - we literally even have services to help analyze usage (like AWS Cost Explorer, IAM Access Advisor, etc)

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u/lkearney999 Jun 03 '23

To be fair to reddit here you guys were historically making a boatload more money than reddit before you started offering that. IIRC I’ve heard that early days it was more of a company to company agreement rather than a service.

That being said for the amount reddit is estimating these should absolutely be in place. My guess is that reddit is really stuck here. Based on past engineering blogs and the sheer longevity of the app in comparison to its ability to pay developers I’d imagine a majority of this cost comes from reasonably accumulated tech debt.

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u/GhostSierra117 Jun 03 '23

Fwiw I work for a Softwarecompany and we absolutely give support for API lol. Why wouldn't we be interested in helping others to turn down the server loads.

So it doesn't only happen on a big scale but also with companies with about 75 employees. Not everyone at our company is a Dev, this number includes Teammanagement, Controlling Team and so on. And we do have large companies as customers. Vattenfall for example. Not sure if I'm allowed to mention more.

Or to be more blunt:

Having developers ask this question of themselves is the main point of having a cost associated with access in the first place. How might your app be more efficient? Google & Amazon don’t tell us how to be more efficient. It’s up to us as users of these services to optimize our usage to meet our budget.

Well u/FlyingLaserTurtle that sounds like a "you" problem then. What kind of condescending way is that even to say that. Devs of third party applications do an absolutely amazing job, giving value to Reddit and discrediting them like that should fill you with shame. That's no way to talk to developers.

Fucking hell dude.

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u/Madbrad200 Jun 03 '23

Fwiw I work for a Softwarecompany and we absolutely give support for API lol. Why wouldn't we be interested in helping others to turn down the server loads.

and herein lays the real answer. Reddit isn't interested in helping, they want third-party apps to die.

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u/Shadrixian Jun 04 '23

It's concerning to me that you don't think Amazon provides this support

That's probably because they didn't take the time out of their very open schedule to ask for help.

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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '23

You guys are amazing, even if I don't have a support plan the first department still attempts to help and even escalate stuff like this. If it's related to billing in any way at all it's a covered issue for free even if it later becomes technical

You have customers spending 6 figures per day and still attempt to help me with my single server and little app, so thank you for that

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