Yelp’s lack of transparency around API charges angers developers
Reading Time: 2 minutesOn July 19, Yelp informed select indie developers that they would have to switch to paid accounts, due to high API usage. Developers were given four days to make the change, in a move that echoes recent communication bungles by Reddit and Twitter.
When the developers replied to the July 19 email, Yelp sent a deck of pricing tiers with base pricing starting from $229 per month for a limit of 1,000 API calls per day.
However, Yelp did not surface other options, which include $8 to $15 à la carte packages for 1,000 call apiece.
The method of communication and lack of transparency has angered developers, some of whom shuttered their services, even after Yelp gave them a 90-day leeway and apologized.
What happened?
‘If we don’t hear back from you by 4:00 pm EST on 7/23/2024, we will temporarily disable your API key until we receive a response with the above-requested information.’
David Kopec, who developed a Mac app called Restaurants for finding local dining options, noted on his blog that Yelp initially offered him up to 25,000 daily API calls for free in 2014.
Other startups have publicly voiced their own complaints about Yelp’s handling of the situation.
Roj Niyogi, co-founder of Enefits, which is a small startup built around a location-based rewards program, said that the company used Yelp’s API for place data. He said Yelp’s short notice and threatening to take away access were like a ‘virtual gun to the head.’
Yelp responds
‘Yelp sunsetted free, commercial, unlimited use of the Yelp Fusion API in 2019 and has been in the process of migrating developers to a paid program over the last several years. The developer community is important to Yelp, and we’ve heard their feedback about the transition period from the free Yelp Fusion API to our paid program,’ a company spokesperson said in a statement.
‘We’re sorry for any inconvenience or frustration this abbreviated transition might have caused.’
Kopec also decided to shutter his project. He said the company didn’t respond to him about the price disparity between the deck sent to him and the website.
‘Restaurants was a very low-selling app, and it would not have made sense either way to continue financially. But again, I do not begrudge them going to paid [version of API]. Only that they gave me four days’ notice and sent an inaccurate and threatening email,’ Kopec said over email, referring to Yelp’s note about disabling his API key.
As AI models increase in number, companies sitting on large sets of user-generated data have been limiting third-party access. Over the last year, Twitter/X and Reddit made it difficult for makers of third-party clients and tools to keep supporting development by changing their API terms.
These platforms alienated developers who had built popular tools and supported these social networks for years. Much like with Yelp, developers were frustrated by those platforms’ lack of transparency, support and pricing for small developers. Eventually, a lot of them moved to developing apps for new platforms.
Maybe there is a lesson for Yelp in this.
Ref: techcrunch
MediaDownloader.net -> Free Online Video Downloader, Download Any Video From YouTube, VK, Vimeo, Twitter, Twitch, Tumblr, Tiktok, Telegram, TED, Streamable, Soundcloud, Snapchat, Share, Rumble, Reddit, PuhuTV, Pinterest, Periscope, Ok.ru, MxTakatak, Mixcloud, Mashable, LinkedIn, Likee, Kwai, Izlesene, Instagram, Imgur, IMDB, Ifunny, Gaana, Flickr, Febspot, Facebook, ESPN, Douyin, Dailymotion, Buzzfeed, BluTV, Blogger, Bitchute, Bilibili, Bandcamp, Akıllı, 9GAG