Opening the Instapaper API

Today, we’re opening Instapaper’s Full API for all users rather than just Premium subscribers, which has traditionally been the case. In 2011, when Instapaper’s full API was introduced, Marco “made an unusual decision” and restricted Full API access to paid-subscriber accounts. At that time, there were concerns that a full Instapaper API would result in free, native iOS apps that could be used to replace Instapaper, and thereby cannibalize sales of the Instapaper iOS app (the Android app was still a year away at this point). Instapaper’s iOS app has been free since last September and, with all of the great additions we’ve made to our Premium offerings, we don’t see any reason to continue restricting API access for non-subscribers.

A note to developers: If your applications checked for subscription status by attempting to reach an API endpoint and then checked the result to see the user was not a subscriber, your apps should work for all users with no additional effort. On the other hand, if you checked the /api/1.1/account/verify_credentials endpoint to determine if the user was a subscriber, you will need to change the logic in your application to allow non-subscribers to move forward. We apologize for the inconvenience if you fall into the latter group.

The whole team is really happy to be moving forward with our new open API policy! Please let us know if you have any thoughts or questions via email to support@help.instapaper.com, @InstapaperHelp on Twitter, or in the comments below.

Thanks,

• Instapaper Team