Is AO3 Down? Archive of Our Own Says Restoration Could Take 2 to 4 Weeks

Archive of Our Own, the massive fan-fiction site better known as AO3, went offline Thursday for what began as maintenance, and its operators now say it may not be fully back for weeks.

In an update posted to its official status page Thursday afternoon, the site’s team wrote: “We estimate that service restoration for AO3 will take around 2 weeks but it could be up to 4 weeks. We are hopeful that we will be able to bring the site back up in a degraded state sooner.”

Is AO3 down right now?

Yes. As of Thursday evening ET, AO3’s status page still listed the site as “down for maintenance.” The timeline posted by the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), the nonprofit that runs AO3, went like this (times converted to ET):

• 3:13 a.m. ET: “AO3 is down for maintenance.”
• 5:03 a.m. ET: Maintenance in progress, expected to take “at least 12 hours, but it may take longer.”
• 1:41 p.m. ET: Restoration estimated at around two weeks, possibly up to four.

The team said that if the site returns early in a degraded state, “there may be times when the site has to be brought down temporarily until this is fully resolved.” It asked users to stay tuned to the status page for more updates.

Why is AO3 down?

AO3 has not publicly explained what went wrong. Its posts describe the outage only as maintenance and do not say what is being fixed or why it is taking so long.

TechCrunch reported that the site went offline for what was supposed to be routine overnight maintenance. Some fans have speculated about a link to last week’s widely reported PHP security flaws, but TechCrunch noted that AO3 is built on Ruby on Rails rather than PHP, so the outage is unlikely to be related. That is the outlet’s assessment, not a statement from AO3.

The status page did show earlier trouble. On Oct. 23, AO3 reported problems with email notifications, challenge matching, history, works and bookmarks showing in listings, and other background functions. AO3 has not said whether that issue is connected to Thursday’s shutdown.

Separately, OTW took its Fanlore wiki offline briefly on Oct. 21 because of the PHP vulnerabilities and brought it back the same day, according to the status page. Fanlore is a different site from AO3.

What is Archive of Our Own?

AO3 is a free, noncommercial archive where fans post and read stories about characters and worlds from books, TV, movies, games and more. It is a project of the OTW, which TechCrunch noted relies on volunteers and donations to keep the site running.

The community’s reaction to Thursday’s news was immediate. TechCrunch reported that within two hours of the announcement, the status update had drawn millions of views across social media, along with a wave of anxious comments from readers and writers.

Are my works and bookmarks safe?

AO3 has not said anything about lost data, and nothing in its updates suggests that works, bookmarks or accounts have been deleted. At the same time, it has not given details about the underlying problem, so there is no official word either way. Users waiting on specific answers should watch the official channels rather than rumors.

Where can I check AO3’s status?

The official sources are:

• The OTW status page (otwstatus.org)
• AO3’s status accounts on Bluesky and X
• The @ao3org account on Tumblr

All three carried the same updates on Thursday.

FAQ