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Introduction
The AO3 Ship Stats is a project which collects data on the most-used relationship tags on AO3. This primarily takes the form of "Top 100" Ship Lists, which are available in a number of different categories. The list also collects information on the gender and race of the characters being shipped.
Key features to be aware of include:
- All data in this project is collected from the site Archive Of Our Own, and may not reflect the size of the fandom on other sites.
- This project has no official affiliation with AO3 or the OTW.
- This data includes both romantic/sexual relationship tags (denoted with a "/" between the names) and platonic/familial relationship tags (denoted with an "&" between the names). The same characters may appear on the list in both types of relationship.
- The data is manually cleaned to avoid duplicating tags which are related to each other as meta-tags or sub-tags in AO3's database.
- Data is collected based solely on the public work count. This is because of the ethical issues around posting data collected from private or locked works.
- "This Year" and "Jan-Dec" lists are both based on the net difference in work count at the start and end of the period. This means that works being deleted or privated will count negatively towards the total. The data cannot be exactly replicated using AO3 date filters, because AO3 does not keep records of deleted works.
- Both gender and race are researched to the best of my ability. The exact system of categorisation has evolved over the course of the project, but is normally outlined in each year's FAQ post.
- All data is collected using an automated program of my own design, followed by manual checks. Despite my best efforts, mistakes may sometimes be made, and I am always open to polite corrections on recent posts.
Data Posts
This project includes four types of list.
- This Year Top 100: The 100 relationship tags which have increased the most in work count since the publication of the year before's lists.
- All Time Top 100: The 100 AO3 relationship tags which have the most total works. Previously called "Overall Top 100".
- Femslash Top 100: The 100 relationship tags representing F/F relationships which have the most total works.
- Jan-Dec Top 100: Similar to the "This Year Top 100", this shows tags which have increased the most in work count in a one year period, but for a calendar year Jan-Dec.
The main data publication takes place in July or August each year; this includes the first three lists. The Jan-Dec list is published in early January of the following year.
The full, unprocessed source data for all years of this project is available in the Dataset Release. The most recent dataset included is January 2026.
Other Related Posts
In addition to the main data posts, this project includes several one-off data posts and analyses:
- 2024 Bonus Lists (published 2024)
- Platonic Top 100
- F/M Top 100
- Poly Top 100
- OC Ships Top 100
- OTP:True Top 100
- Reader Top 100
- Nonbinary Top 100
- North America Top 100
- Asia Top 100
- Europe Top 100
- Time Series 2013-2020 (published 2020)
- What does a ‘Person Of Colour’ look like in the AO3 Ship Stats? (published 2019)
- What Would We Expect? (published 2015)
This project also includes a number of related essays and meta posts:
- What is the Race of a Fictional Character? (published 2025)
- Fandom’s Race Problem and the AO3 Ship Stats and its companion piece But!: A Response to Responses (published 2016)
- It's Complicated: Possible Reasons for the Lack of Femslash (published 2013)