The Archive of Our Own (AO3) is a non-profit, non-commercial archive for transformative fanworks; created by and for fans of books, music, art, games, shows, movies, real-person fiction (RPF), and other fandoms. It runs on open-source archiving software developed by the OTW.
AO3 entered open beta in November 2009. By February 2014, one million fanworks had been uploaded; and in October 2016, AO3 reached one million registered users. AO3 exited open beta in April 2026 with over 10 million registered users and 17 million fanworks across over 77,000 fandoms.
Read more about AO3’s history on Fanlore.
Our Mission
AO3’s mission is to provide a fanwork archive built upon the principle of maximum inclusiveness of fanwork content. Fanworks that do not violate the Content Policy or some other part of the Terms of Service (TOS) will not be removed, even if someone believes they are offensive or objectionable.
AO3 doesn’t have any ads, nor does it sell or share your data. Read more about how AO3 protects fans’ privacy in the Privacy Policy.
AO3 and the OTW are committed to defending fanworks against legal challenges, and the OTW has legal resources and alliances on which we can draw. However, that is not a guarantee that the OTW can or will fight each battle. The OTW Board of Directors and Legal Advocacy Team will take into account a variety of factors, both legal and otherwise, when responding to a legal challenge.
AO3 strives to make its policies readable. The TOS and TOS FAQ provide explanations for unusual legal terms and answers to common questions.
Our Team
The OTW supports all of its projects, and many committees contribute to AO3 in some capacity. However, several committees are dedicated exclusively to AO3. If you are interested in volunteering specifically for AO3, the committees to look for are:
- Accessibility, Design, & Technology designs, maintains, and develops AO3’s code.
- AO3 Documentation creates and maintains AO3’s FAQs, help pop-ups, and tutorials.
- Policy & Abuse addresses questions and reports about potential violations of the AO3 Terms of Service.
- Support helps users resolve technical problems and passes on user feedback to other AO3 committees.
- Tag Wrangling sorts and organizes tags on AO3, linking related tags together for better filtering and searching.
- User Response Translation addresses PAC and Support’s translation needs in specific high-need languages.
Outside of AO3-specific committees, the OTW committees who most commonly help support this project are:
- Communications publishes news posts on AO3 and communicates with users about AO3-related updates.
- Open Doors imports at-risk archives and fanzines to AO3.
- Systems manages the servers that AO3 runs on.
- Translation helps committees communicate with users in non-English languages and translates news and information about AO3.
Get Involved
Opportunities to volunteer for AO3 committees are posted on the OTW Volunteering page throughout the year. For answers to common questions about volunteering and recruitment, take a look at our Volunteering FAQ.
Volunteer recruitment is announced on the OTW website and in AO3 news posts. It is also shared on all social media sites where we actively post. If you want to make sure you hear about the latest recruitment opportunities, check out our OTW News by Email service. This allows you to sign up to receive an email notification whenever we publish a news post (including recruitment calls).
You can also support AO3 by contributing to our open source code without formally volunteering. Refer to our Contributing Guidelines on GitHub for more information.
If you have any other volunteering questions, reach out to our Volunteers & Recruiting committee. They handle recruitment and induction for all OTW committees.
Learn More
You can learn more about AO3 in the Archive FAQs. If you have any other questions, contact the Communications committee.