Reddit API Pricing in 2026: Free Tier, Costs and Shutdown

As of October 2026, the Reddit API is free for approved non-commercial use, at 100 queries per minute per OAuth client. Commercial use needs a private agreement with Reddit, which does not publish a price. And the bigger news is not the price: Reddit is closing its public Data API to new requests on 31 October 2026 and plans to shut public access in March 2027.

This guide covers what the API costs today, who can still get access, the dates that matter, and what to use for public Reddit data instead.

How much does the Reddit API cost in 2026?

There are effectively two prices: free, for approved non-commercial use, and a private contract for everything else.

The free tier's limit is 100 queries per minute per OAuth client id, averaged over a 10-minute window, according to Reddit's Data API Wiki. Clients that do not authenticate with OAuth get much less.

Where does the $0.24 per 1,000 calls figure come from?

Almost every article on Reddit API pricing quotes $0.24 per 1,000 API calls. That number dates from June 2023, when Reddit told the developer of the Apollo app it would charge about $12,000 per 50 million requests. Apollo, which made billions of requests a month, shut down on 30 June 2023 rather than pay.

Reddit has never put that rate on a public, self-serve pricing page. Treat it as a historical reference point, not a price you can sign up for. In 2026, commercial access is negotiated with Reddit directly, and the terms depend on your use.

Is the Reddit API free?

Only for approved, non-commercial use, and getting approved is now the hard part.

• November 2025: Reddit introduced its Responsible Builder Policy and closed self-service API access. New OAuth credentials need approval, and developers are pointed to Devvit first.
• Existing approved apps kept working, within the free rate limit, as long as they stay inside Reddit's policies.
• Commercial use was never free. Reddit's Data API Terms and Developer Terms separate commercial use, which needs a separate agreement, from free non-commercial access.

So "free" means free for a hobby project or moderator tool that Reddit has approved, not free for a product.

When is Reddit shutting down its public API?

On 30 September 2026, Reddit announced a timeline for retiring public API access and RSS feeds in r/redditdev and r/modnews, as reported by MediaNama and TechRepublic:

Reddit is moving third-party apps to Devvit, its Developer Platform, and has set aside a $1 million App Migration Program that pays eligible migrating apps $1,000 each. Devvit apps run inside Reddit, on Reddit's hosting, in JavaScript or TypeScript. That suits bots and community tools. It does not suit exporting posts and comments into your own database, notebook or AI agent.

After March 2027, researchers, social listening tools and AI products that read Reddit data will need a commercial arrangement with Reddit. Reddit has not said whether it will publish a price for that.

What do you get from the Reddit API today?

For an approved app, the Data API covers almost everything a Reddit client needs:

• Reads: subreddits, posts, full comment trees, user profiles, search and listings such as hot, new and top.
• Writes: posting, commenting, voting, messaging and moderation actions, on behalf of users who authorise your app.
• Native objects: Reddit's own data shapes, with fields such as flair and moderation state.

The free limit of 100 queries per minute is about 144,000 calls a day per OAuth client, which is generous for one community tool and tight for anything that monitors many subreddits.

What are the hidden costs of the Reddit API?

• Approval time. Since November 2025 you cannot just register an app and start. Plan for a review, and after 31 October 2026, for no new public API access at all.
• Commercial terms. If your product makes money, directly or indirectly, from Reddit data, the free tier does not apply. There is no price to look up, so you cannot budget until Reddit answers.
• AI restrictions. Reddit's terms do not allow training machine-learning or AI models on user content without express permission. Reddit sells that access through licensing deals.
• A moving target. The public API's end date means any new build on it has a short shelf life.

When is the official Reddit API the right choice?

Use Reddit's own tools when:

• You are building a bot or moderator tool that acts inside Reddit. Devvit is now the intended home for these.
• You need to post, vote, message or moderate for users who authorise you.
• You already have approved access for a non-commercial project and stay within the rate limit, until the 2027 cut-off.
• You need licensed data at scale, for example for AI training. That is a commercial deal with Reddit.

What is the alternative for public Reddit data?

If you need to read public subreddits, posts and comment threads from your own code, for monitoring, research or an AI agent, a public-data API is the practical route as the public Data API winds down. crawlfeed serves these Reddit reads:

A full comment tree costs 1 credit, and the response uses the same Profile, Post and Comment shapes as X, TikTok, Instagram and the other 26 platforms. There is no approval queue: new accounts get 100 free credits and failed calls are refunded. Pack prices are on the pricing page.

The limits matter. crawlfeed is independent of Reddit and only returns public data. It cannot post, comment, vote, send messages, moderate or read private or quarantined communities, and it does not grant you any licence to Reddit content. You are still responsible for how you use and store the data, including Reddit's own terms where they apply to you.

For a fuller comparison, see Reddit API alternatives, and the Reddit reference for every parameter.

The short answer

The Reddit API is free for approved non-commercial use at 100 queries per minute, and commercial use is a private deal with no public price. The $0.24 per 1,000 calls figure is from 2023 and was never a self-serve rate. More importantly, new public API requests close on 31 October 2026 and public access ends in March 2027. If you are starting a Reddit data project now, plan for Devvit, a licensing deal with Reddit, or a public-data API.