How Much Does It Cost to Run AO3?

Starting with the donation banner

If you have opened AO3 recently, you may have noticed the donation banner at the top of the page.

For many users, AO3 feels almost like public infrastructure. You open the site, search a fandom, click into a work, leave, and come back later. There are no ads, no membership wall, and no pop-up asking you to upgrade halfway through a chapter. That quietness makes it easy to forget that the archive is not free. It only means the bill is not placed directly in front of you.

The donation banner breaks that illusion. AO3 costs money. It simply does not charge readers at the door.

OTW’s budget

According to OTW’s 2025 budget update, as of September 30, 2025, OTW expected annual income of USD 790,202.01 and had received USD 602,410.00. It expected total annual expenses of USD 992,759.95 and had already spent USD 781,335.41. In the 2025 budget, OTW expected a shortfall of about USD 202,557.94 and planned to transfer USD 205,000 from reserves to cover expenses.

Item	2025 budget / projected	As of 2025-09-30
Total income	USD 790,202.01	USD 602,410.00
Net income after transaction fees	USD 744,195.98	USD 593,463.97
Total expenses	USD 992,759.95	USD 781,335.41
Projected net income / shortfall	-USD 202,557.94	-USD 178,925.41
Transfer from reserves	USD 205,000.00	USD 180,000.00

This is not a story about a startup losing money to buy growth. OTW is a donation-funded nonprofit. Its income comes mainly from users and supporters. In 2025, the April membership drive had brought in USD 269,766.01, the October drive was budgeted at USD 55,000, donations outside drives were projected at USD 400,000, and employer matching donations were projected at USD 65,000¹. Interest and royalties existed, but were small. OTW also had to pay third-party payment processing fees, projected at about USD 46,006.03 for 2025.

The largest item is AO3

AO3’s own 2025 budget was USD 669,120.53. By September 30, it had spent USD 560,321.01. That represented 67.4% of OTW’s total expenses. Roughly speaking, for every three dollars OTW spent, about two went to AO3.

gantt
    title OTW 2025 expense structure
    dateFormat  X
    axisFormat  %s
    section Expense areas
    AO3 (669,120.53)              :active, 0, 669120
    Development & Membership (137,998.95) : 0, 137998
    Administration (134,924.67)   : 0, 134924
    Fanlore (37,565.43)           : 0, 37565
    Open Doors (5,131.78)         : 0, 5131
    TWC (5,090.67)                : 0, 5090
    Legal Advocacy (2,927.92)     : 0, 2927

Where AO3 spends money

AO3’s money does not go to author payments or an editorial staff. The largest line items are servers and infrastructure.

Major AO3 expense	2025 budget	Spent as of 2025-09-30
New servers	USD 407,677.50	USD 362,677.50
Server colocation	USD 136,656.52	USD 99,969.39
Server hardware and equipment	USD 40,186.17	USD 21,260.59
Site monitoring	USD 12,500.00	USD 12,500.00
Productivity tools	USD 53,510.87	USD 48,845.96
Other subscription services	USD 15,308.24	USD 14,680.74

The numbers are dry, but the reality behind them is concrete. There are more works, more users, more searches, more bookmarks, more subscriptions, more comments, more tag filters, and more history pages. Each light tap on the interface has machines behind it. AO3 is not a static library. It is closer to a city with the lights on all day and all night.

The most expensive part of AO3, however, does not appear clearly in the budget: volunteer time.

flowchart TD
    A["AO3 operating costs"] --> B["Budgeted costs"]
    A --> C["Costs outside the ledger"]

    B --> B1["Server purchase and expansion"]
    B --> B2["Colocation, bandwidth, monitoring"]
    B --> B3["Domains, tools, subscriptions"]
    B --> B4["Finance, audit, insurance, payment fees"]

    C --> C1["Code development and maintenance"]
    C --> C2["Systems administration"]
    C --> C3["Tag wrangling"]
    C --> C4["User support"]
    C --> C5["Policy enforcement and abuse reports"]
    C --> C6["Documentation, translation, fundraising, management"]

Volunteer labor outside the ledger

OTW’s volunteer FAQ makes it clear that volunteers are not paid for their work. The lack of a large payroll in AO3’s budget does not mean AO3 does not need labor. It means that much of the professional work is done by fans as volunteers.

Technical volunteers

The most visible group is technical volunteers. Accessibility, Design & Technology designs, maintains, and develops AO3’s code. Systems maintains servers and infrastructure. One group keeps site functions moving forward; the other keeps the site standing. Bug fixes, deployment, accessibility, open-source maintenance, and performance work are often noticed only when something goes wrong. The best outcome is almost invisible: pages load, search works, bookmarks save, and drafts do not disappear when someone posts a work.

Tag wrangling

AO3 is not only code. One of its largest and most distinctive projects is Tag Wrangling. OTW’s pages describe Tag Wrangling as OTW’s largest committee, with more than 400 volunteers. Wranglers do not rewrite the tags authors put on works. They connect synonyms, related spellings, and variant forms behind the scenes so readers can search and filter more effectively.

This work is deeply fannish. It cannot be handed entirely to machines, because tags are not just keywords. They carry context, jokes, language differences, fandom habits, canon changes, and local meanings. A large part of AO3’s searchability is maintained by people who understand how fandom speaks.

Support

Support is often the first place users go when something is wrong: login issues, feature questions, suspected bugs, tag-related questions, feedback, and more. OTW has said Support receives roughly 2,000 to 3,000 tickets per month and usually works with 30 to 50 volunteers. Replies are often reviewed by another Support member before being sent, so missed details or unclear wording can be caught.

That makes AO3 feel less like a cold website and more like a public facility with people on duty. A Support form is not a message into a void. It is a ticket that a volunteer will read, route, research, and answer.

Policy and Abuse

Policy & Abuse handles harder boundaries: reports that may involve violations of AO3’s Terms of Service. These can include harassment, spam, plagiarism, account security, content policy issues, and other complicated cases. Volunteers investigate reports, review each other’s decisions, keep enforcement consistent, and protect privacy and sensitive information.

This work is difficult because it is rarely just technical. It deals with conflict, harm, boundaries, and interpretation.

Documentation and translation

AO3 Documentation maintains FAQs, tutorials, help pop-ups, and internal documents. It is not glamorous work, but it decides whether users can find their own answers and whether Support is flooded with repeated questions. One clear FAQ can prevent hundreds or thousands of tickets.

Translation work matters too. User Response Translation supports Support and Policy & Abuse in high-demand languages. Translation helps OTW projects, news, and explanations reach non-English users. AO3 is global, but the organization’s working language is largely English. Translation volunteers bridge that gap so “global users” is not only a slogan.

Other supporting teams

AO3 also depends on teams that are not AO3-only but regularly support it:

• Open Doors imports at-risk fan archives and fanzines into AO3.
• Communications publishes AO3-related news and updates.
• Development & Membership handles fundraising, membership, and donor communication.
• Finance handles payments, budgets, taxes, and audits.
• Legal handles legal advocacy and consultation.
• Volunteers & Recruiting handles recruitment, onboarding, volunteer records, and internal materials.

Two answers

So the question “how much does AO3 cost to run?” has at least two answers.

The budget answer: in the 2025 budget, AO3 itself cost about USD 669,100. If we include OTW’s broader organizational costs that support AO3, OTW’s annual budget was about USD 992,800. AO3 was the largest expense area, at 67.4% of total spending.

The non-budget answer: without volunteers, AO3’s real operating cost would be much higher. Tag wrangling, code maintenance, user support, policy enforcement, documentation, translation, systems work, fundraising, finance, and legal work would look very different if every hour had to be paid at market rates.

This helps explain why AO3’s donation language often sounds less like “buy a service” and more like “maintain a public good.” Users are not donating for a premium account, an ad-free tier, or exclusive features. Donations buy servers, bandwidth, monitoring, domains, insurance, audits, payment fees, project management tools, and the basic conditions that let volunteers keep working together.

AO3 is unusual because it is both material and idealistic. It needs machines, money, budgets, and audits. It also depends on fans willing to put time, technical skill, language ability, and patience into the archive. Without money, the site cannot run. Without people, it loses order, response, and care.

So how much does AO3 cost?

The 2025 budget answer is about USD 669,000 for AO3 itself and about USD 993,000 for OTW overall.

The fuller answer is countless unpriced hours. Those hours are hidden in tags that can be found, support emails that get replies, server upgrades, FAQ edits, fundraising drives, and Terms of Service decisions. AO3 does not feel like a commercial platform because it does not turn users into products. AO3 continues to run because many people have turned “I want this place to exist” into actual work.

That is where its real cost lies. It is also where much of its value lies.