I think it also important to note that it wasn’t just the pricing itself, which was indeed already heinous, but that the rate calculation changed. It used to be a rate per user per app (apikey+oauth) but they changed that to just the per app … that then has a multiplicative effect on the costs and makes the “free tier” they were talking about especially pointless…
It would be easy for an app to start at free tier … not have much growth through word of mouth but enough given the per app rates to push it over boundary points … and then be due a significant and unavoidable invoice in a couple of months…
The rate is $0.24 per 1000 API calls. You are thinking about the “free tier”. Before, all calls were free, and even if there were per-app/per-user limits buried in the docs they were not enforced. After the announcement there was some confusion about whether the new “free tier” limits are per-user or per-app, and turns out they are indeed 10 calls/minute per app! The free tier is for developer testing basically, it cannot be used for a mass market app. So the rate calculation hasn’t changed, it was introduced to kill off free apps.
I think it also important to note that it wasn’t just the pricing itself, which was indeed already heinous, but that the rate calculation changed. It used to be a rate per user per app (apikey+oauth) but they changed that to just the per app … that then has a multiplicative effect on the costs and makes the “free tier” they were talking about especially pointless…
It would be easy for an app to start at free tier … not have much growth through word of mouth but enough given the per app rates to push it over boundary points … and then be due a significant and unavoidable invoice in a couple of months…
The rate is $0.24 per 1000 API calls. You are thinking about the “free tier”. Before, all calls were free, and even if there were per-app/per-user limits buried in the docs they were not enforced. After the announcement there was some confusion about whether the new “free tier” limits are per-user or per-app, and turns out they are indeed 10 calls/minute per app! The free tier is for developer testing basically, it cannot be used for a mass market app. So the rate calculation hasn’t changed, it was introduced to kill off free apps.