Personally, I don’t find it a rip-off given how Apollo is miles far away compared to the default reddit app in terms of optimization and QOLs. It’s also my way of supporting Christian, Apollo’s developer, since he’s the only one doing the whole thing for the app from UI design to optimizations, and even dealing with the community’s feedback. Basically a one man team app, so a small one time fee of $5 is such a minuscule thing for me. But to each of their own.