Fanfiction by the Numbers
What 19,393 of the most-loved fics on AO3 reveal about how fandom actually reads: who writes longest, which tropes earn the most kudos, and how much of the archive ever gets finished. All figures computed from ao3wiki's curated database of popular works, 2026 edition.
The Longest Fics in the Database
The top entry runs 7,929,664 words — 13.5× the length of War and Peace.
The Most-Kudosed Fics
Reader appreciation, measured in kudos. "All the Young Dudes" leads with 314,072.
Ratings: How Explicit Is Popular Fic?
Share of works by AO3 rating. Explicit leads at 28%.
Length: One-Shots Rule the Archive
Share of works by word count. The median popular fic is 14,064 words.
The WIP Problem, Quantified
Completion rate by rating, among works that declare a status. General Audiences fics finish at 65%, while explicit fics finish at 56%.
Which Fandoms Reward Their Writers Most?
Median kudos per popular work, fandoms with at least 10 works in the database. Hannibal tops the table at 15,227 median kudos.
The Tropes Readers Reward Most
Median kudos per work by trope tag, minimum 10 works. 5+1 Things earns the highest median at 24,846 kudos.
Most Kudos Per Word Written
Kudos per 1,000 words — the archive's efficiency champions. "I Am Groot" earns 136,005 kudos per 1,000 words, which may say something profound about the internet.
Methodology & How to Cite
All figures are computed from ao3wiki's curated database of 19,393 popular, real works on Archive of Our Own — public tag metadata only (titles, authors, kudos, word counts, ratings, tags), never story content. This is a sample of reader favorites across 222 fandoms, not a census of AO3's ~15 million works; medians here describe popular fic, which skews longer and more-kudosed than the archive at large. Figures refresh when the database is rebuilt.
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