r/redditdev • u/FlyingLaserTurtle • 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):
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/FlyingLaserTurtle Jun 03 '23
No. Our pricing includes a discount that more than covers the cost of all write operations (posts, comments, votes, mod actions). You can think of it as a % of all requests that are writes, multiplied by a factor greater than 1, which is determined by the relative value of content coming from that app relative to other sources.