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In 2022, Reddit client Apollo generated approximately **** million app downloads - making it the most popular third-party app to access the popular community and news aggregator platform. In 2022, the official Reddit mobile app was the most downloaded Reddit app by far - generating over **** million downloads from users and surpassing all its clients.

Reddit is never too far from the news front page. On April 18, 2023, Reddit announced on its official blog that the company was looking into restructuring access to its API (Application Programming Interface), including charging access for accessing the platform's API for commercial purposes. As third-party app publishers learned swiftly, many small developers providing access to the popular community-hosting social media were affected by the API changes.

Why so many clients? Reddit’s long way to mobile

As noted by its communities, third party-apps have provided Reddit users with different levels of accessibility, such as in the case of Luna for Reddit - a client app specifically designed to cater to a visually impaired and blind audience that saw downloads in 2022. While the company has made known that the API access changes will not apply to so-called "accessibility-focused apps" and apps using the API for non-commercial research purposes, the proposed changes stirred an uproar of discontent among users and moderators. Moderators have been using third-party mobile Reddit apps well before the launch of Reddit’s official mobile app in 2016. AlienBlue, the first third-party client app for Reddit was launched in the early 2010, and subsequently acquired by Reddit in 2014.

Despite the availability of several client apps and an official mobile app, users keep accessing Reddit from their browsers even on mobile. In April 2022, Reddit generated approximately *** billion visits from mobile devices, as well as around *** billion visits from desktop devices.

The power of community on Reddit

As of the end of 2022, Reddit counted approximately **million daily active users (DAU) worldwide, with its community creating over *** billion pieces of content within the last measured year. After the API changes, several Reddit communities decided to render their content private as a form of protest. Additionally, several Reddit communities decided to mark themselves as NSFW (non-safe for work), displaying content unsuitable to be paired with ads presence, putting the platform at risk of revenue losses. From collective art creation – as in the case of the annual April’s Fool project on r/places - to the engagement in online protests for the recent API changes, Reddit communities and moderators have once again showcased the power they hold on the platform.