[vlakreeh]

These apps aren't grossly inefficient though, they've been substantially lower than the 84k per user per day API limit that reddit has held in the past for these applications, typically being below 500 requests per user per day. Even reddit's official app uses more API requests per day.

[raldi]

86,400 requests per day is Reddit’s historic per-user limit, but the number was picked as a maximum, not an average or a number any significant fraction of users would be hitting any significant fraction of the time. An app aggregating many users, if reasonably efficient, would be expected to have an average per-user rate over time much much lower than the single-user, single-moment absolute limit.

[vlakreeh]

> not an average or a number any significant fraction of users would be hitting any significant fraction of the time

Mhm and no major third party reddit app is going anywhere near that with their 500 requests per day per user.

> An app aggregating many users, if reasonably efficient, would be expected to have an average per-user rate over time much much lower than the single-user, single-moment absolute limit.

The per user rate of these apps is 500 a day, which is reasonably efficient. Your point of them being "grossly inefficient" is just false.