AO3 Scraper - Archive of Our Own Fanfiction Data

Scrape fanfiction metadata from Archive of Our Own (AO3), the largest open-source fanfiction archive with over 12 million works.

What does AO3 Scraper do?

This actor searches AO3 for works matching your queries and extracts structured metadata including:

• Title and authors
• Fandoms (Harry Potter, Marvel, Sherlock, etc.)
• Rating (General, Teen, Mature, Explicit, Not Rated)
• Warnings (Archive warnings applied to the work)
• Categories (F/M, M/M, F/F, Gen, Multi, Other)
• Relationships and characters
• Freeform tags (community tags applied by authors)
• Stats: word count, chapter count, kudos, hits, bookmarks, comments
• Completion status (Complete / In Progress)
• Publication and update dates
• Summary text

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
searchQueries	string[]	["Harry Potter"]	Keywords to search for works
maxListings	integer	50	Max works per query (0=unlimited, max 1000)
scrapeDetails	boolean	false	Visit work pages for full metadata
sortBy	enum	""	Sort by: relevance, date updated, kudos, hits, word count, bookmarks
proxyConfiguration	object	{}	Proxy settings

Output

Each result contains:

{
    "title": "The Debt of Time",
    "authors": ["ShayaLonnie"],
    "fandoms": ["Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling"],
    "rating": "Mature",
    "warnings": ["Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings"],
    "categories": ["F/M"],
    "relationships": ["Hermione Granger/Sirius Black"],
    "characters": ["Hermione Granger", "Sirius Black", "Remus Lupin"],
    "freeformTags": ["Time Travel", "Marauders Era", "Slow Burn"],
    "language": "English",
    "wordCount": 487823,
    "chapters": "154/154",
    "kudos": 25431,
    "hits": 1203847,
    "bookmarks": 8923,
    "comments": 12847,
    "status": "Complete",
    "publishedDate": "15 Mar 2015",
    "updatedDate": null,
    "summary": "Hermione Granger is sent back in time...",
    "sourceUrl": "https://archiveofourown.org/works/10677106",
    "searchQuery": "Harry Potter",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-04-26T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Use Cases

• Fandom analytics: Analyze the most popular fandoms, pairings, and tropes
• Trend tracking: Monitor which tags and relationships are gaining popularity
• Academic research: Study fan communities, transformative works, and online creativity
• Content discovery: Find highly-rated works in specific fandoms or with specific tags
• Author analytics: Track prolific authors and their output metrics

Rate Limiting

AO3 is a nonprofit archive run by volunteers. This scraper uses conservative rate limiting (2.5s between requests, max concurrency of 1) to be respectful of their servers. Please use responsibly.

Notes

• AO3 search results are capped at 5000 pages (100,000 results)
• The scrapeDetails option provides full summaries and series info but is significantly slower
• Works marked as "Restricted" require a logged-in account and will not appear in search results