Reddit recently caused turmoil when it introduced steep prices for access to its API, effectively killing manyexcellent third-party Reddit appsout there that augmented the core experience in often significant ways. The company cited its desire to become profitable and cut off GPT scrapers as a reason why it took this step. It previously all but lost money on providing and updating the API. Reddit’s next move then could strike you as odd, as the business has announced that it will discontinue coins and awards, which likely provided the company with a small but steady stream of revenue.
As a refresher, Reddit coins can be used to get an ad-free experience with some extra bonus perks. Redditors can convert these coins into awards and gift them to other users to show how much they like their post or comment, effectively giving them access to the perks for free. However, coins and awards have to be bought with real money (or are distributed as part of the paid-for Reddit Premium), and as they are gifted, they lose some of their value — an award will give the receiver fewer coins than it was bought for. In theory, that means that Reddit should at least earn some money from this.
Reddit product team member u/venkman01announced in a postthat starting today, coins can no longer be purchased while existing awards and coins will be available until August 10, 2025 (via Mishaal Rahman). They explain that the company wants to make the Reddit experience easier and “a place where the community empowers the community more directly.” With over 50+ different awards, Reddit finds that difficult to achieve with the current system. At the same time, the company doesn’t offer any path forward in its announcement, only saying that “Though we’d love to reveal more to you all now, we’re in the process of early testing and feedback, so aren’t ready to share official details just yet.”
Reddit also hasn’t offered a path forward for coins that were already purchased by Redditors. As it stands, it looks like the value attached to them will just evaporate once awards and coins are discontinued, with the post explicitly stating, “As indicated in ourUser Agreementpast purchases are non-refundable.”
Redditors in the comments are unhappy about this situation. Thetop commentat the time of writing asks, “You’re just taking coins, that we’ve paid cash for, with no consideration? Not even going to give us the equivalent value in premium time for our existing coins and coins we are going to end up not getting?”
Reddit seems to prevent embedding its announcement post, so here is a screenshot of the beginning
Reddit previously got into hot water because of its poorly communicated API changes. Reddit used to have a thriving ecosystem of third-party apps that leveraged the free API to offer a better experience. Some of these apps were just easier to navigate, but many moderators and people with visual impairments outright relied on them to make the platform easier to moderate and browse. Ironically, most third-party Reddit client developers agreed that the API shouldn’t be free — however, many were unhappy with the price that was perceived as too high and the short time frame between announcement and execution.
Redditors protested these changes with blackouts, taking their communities offline or setting them to NSFW, with Reddit pushing back by threatening to replace and actually replacing moderators who did not comply. Awards have never been the most popular addition to Reddit, so it remains to be seen whether or not Redditors will start another protest against the changes.
