DaoScroll vs Webnovel, Wattpad, Royal Road, AO3 & FanFiction.net: A Different Home for Cultivation Novel Readers

If you regularly read web novels or fanfiction online, you probably already know the big names.

There is Webnovel for serialized web fiction and fanfiction, Wattpad for social storytelling, Royal Road for web serials and progression fantasy, Archive of Our Own (AO3) for fanworks, and FanFiction.net for traditional fandom-based fanfiction.

Each platform has built its own community and its own way of helping readers discover stories.

So where does DaoScroll fit?

DaoScroll is still young, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

We are actively building, testing, redesigning, improving our visual UI and UX, expanding the novel library, and learning what readers actually want from a modern web-novel website.

Our goal is not simply to copy Webnovel, Wattpad, Royal Road, AO3, or FanFiction.net.

We want DaoScroll to develop its own reading experience, especially for people who love cultivation novels, Chinese fantasy, system novels, reincarnation, regression, transmigration, progression fantasy, translated web novels, and fanfiction from universes that can sometimes be difficult to discover elsewhere.

Welcome to DaoScroll.

Webnovel: The Large Commercial Web-Novel Experience

Webnovel is probably one of the first names many readers associate with Chinese-style online fiction.

Its current site prominently features original web fiction and fanfiction, including power rankings and fanfiction categories.

It has helped make concepts such as cultivation, systems, reincarnation, transmigration, overpowered protagonists, and serialized fantasy much more familiar to international readers.

For someone who wants a huge established ecosystem, Webnovel naturally has an advantage that a young website cannot reproduce overnight.

DaoScroll is approaching things differently.

Instead of trying to become another massive general-purpose platform immediately, we are building around the reading experience first.

We want opening a novel, finding its chapters, continuing where you left off, exploring similar stories, and reading for long sessions to feel simple.

We are also especially interested in categories that our readers repeatedly enjoy:

Cultivation.

Xianxia.

Xuanhuan.

System novels.

Reincarnation.

Regression.

Weak-to-strong progression.

Overpowered protagonists.

Chinese fantasy.

Translated novels.

And fanfiction based on both popular and less commonly explored fictional universes.

DaoScroll is much smaller today, but being smaller also gives us room to experiment quickly and build around the readers who are actually using the site.

Wattpad: Stories Built Around a Social Community

Wattpad approaches online fiction from another direction.

It describes itself as a social storytelling platform connecting readers and writers. Readers can interact with stories, comment while reading, maintain libraries and reading lists, and discover fiction across many genres. Wattpad has continued updating its discovery features in 2026, including genre, subgenre and fandom categorization and a social feed.

That social element is a major part of Wattpad’s identity.

DaoScroll has a different core audience.

We are heavily influenced by the culture of web novels and long-form serialized fiction, where someone might sit down intending to read three chapters and somehow find themselves fifty chapters deeper several hours later.

That changes how we think about our interface.

The chapter itself matters enormously.

Navigation matters.

Mobile readability matters.

Loading speed matters.

Finding the next chapter without interrupting the reader matters.

Being able to browse a huge chapter list without fighting the interface matters.

As DaoScroll grows, our visual design and UX are being refined around exactly that kind of reading behavior.

We don’t want features to exist simply because another platform has them.

We want features to make sense for someone who actually reads long web novels.

Royal Road: A Strong Home for Serialized Fiction

Royal Road is probably one of the closer comparisons to DaoScroll in terms of web-serial culture.

Royal Road describes itself as a home for web novels and fanfiction, and it has developed a mature discovery ecosystem around fiction. Readers can follow stories, save them for later, favorite them, maintain reading history, use rankings and recommendations, and leave ratings or detailed reviews.

It also gives readers controls for aspects of the reading experience such as font and content width.

Royal Road has had years to develop that ecosystem.

DaoScroll is at the opposite end of that journey.

We are still building ours.

And that is something we want to be transparent about.

You may see the interface change.

You may see new ranking or discovery systems appear.

You may notice novel pages being redesigned.

You may see mobile layouts become cleaner.

You may find new reader features arriving over time.

That is because DaoScroll is not a finished product sitting still.

It is actively growing.

Our long-term objective is to make the site feel increasingly polished without losing something very important:

reading should remain fast and simple.

A beautiful novel website that makes reading annoying has missed the point.

AO3: One of the Internet’s Great Fanwork Archives

When it comes to fanfiction, Archive of Our Own — better known as AO3 — is fundamentally different from most commercial fiction platforms.

AO3 is a nonprofit, noncommercial archive created for transformative fanworks. It is supported by donations rather than advertising, and its tagging and filtering system has become a defining part of the platform.

As of the latest figures shown on AO3’s homepage, the archive contains millions of users and works spread across tens of thousands of fandoms.

Trying to build “another AO3” would make little sense.

That isn’t what DaoScroll is attempting.

Our fanfiction focus comes more from the web-novel side of fandom.

For example, readers may be interested in stories involving cultivation worlds, reincarnated protagonists, systems, alternate timelines, original characters entering existing universes, or someone using knowledge of the original story to change everything.

And we are particularly interested in fanfiction from universes that don’t always dominate English fanfiction recommendations.

That might include Chinese fantasy and cultivation worlds alongside more familiar anime, manga, game and novel universes.

A reader searching for Perfect World fanfiction, Renegade Immortal fanfiction, cultivation fanfiction, system fanfiction or other rare-universe stories should have more places to look.

DaoScroll wants to become one of those places.

FanFiction.net: An Older Generation of Internet Fanfiction

FanFiction.net represents another important part of online fanfiction history.

Its community system allows members to maintain curated archives of stories across areas including anime, books, cartoons, comics, games, movies and television.

The platform has also been working on a modernized version of its experience, with changes focused on areas such as mobile usability, search, personalization and community functionality.

FanFiction.net demonstrates something important:

Readers will keep returning to stories they love even as technology around those stories changes.

DaoScroll takes that lesson seriously.

Modern UI is important.

Animations can be enjoyable.

Profiles can be better.

Rankings can make discovery interesting.

Community systems can make reading feel less isolated.

But none of those should get in the way of the chapter.

The story is still the reason you came.

So What Is DaoScroll Trying to Become?

This is the interesting part.

DaoScroll is not trying to win a checklist competition.

We could write:

“Site A has this.”

“Site B doesn’t have this.”

“Therefore DaoScroll is better.”

But readers know things aren’t that simple.

Webnovel has strengths.

Wattpad has strengths.

Royal Road has strengths.

AO3 has strengths.

FanFiction.net has strengths.

They serve overlapping but different communities.

DaoScroll is developing its own identity around web-novel readers.

We want someone to arrive because they searched for a novel and stay because reading on the site feels good.

We want someone who finishes one cultivation novel to discover another.

We want someone reading a system story to stumble across an unusual reincarnation novel.

We want the person who has already read fanfiction from the biggest fandoms to discover stories based on worlds they rarely see elsewhere.

And we want the site itself to become more enjoyable every time we improve it.

A Growing Visual UI and UX

One of the major areas we are currently working on is DaoScroll’s visual experience.

A web-novel site doesn’t need to look like a complicated social network.

It should feel comfortable.

The information hierarchy should make sense.

Novel covers should be easy to browse.

Titles shouldn’t disappear inside unnecessary clutter.

Genres and tags should actually help discovery.

Chapter navigation should feel natural.

Desktop should look polished.

Mobile should not feel like a squeezed-down desktop website.

Dark reading environments should actually be comfortable during long reading sessions.

And the reader should always know where to go next.

This process is ongoing.

Some parts of DaoScroll today will look different in the future.

That’s intentional.

We are watching how the site is used and continuing to improve the UI and UX rather than deciding that the first design is automatically the final design.

Reading Comes Before Everything Else

This is probably the most important principle behind DaoScroll.

A novel site exists to let people read novels.

It sounds obvious, but it is surprisingly easy for websites to forget.

You can add recommendations.

Comments.

Profiles.

Achievements.

Rankings.

Statistics.

Animations.

Social features.

Notifications.

And dozens of other systems.

But if opening the next chapter becomes slow, none of them matter.

DaoScroll’s development therefore has to balance new features with performance.

We want the platform to become richer without turning a simple chapter page into something unnecessarily heavy.

That matters even more for readers who consume ten, twenty or fifty chapters during one session.

More Than Mainstream Fanfiction

Another area where we want DaoScroll to develop a stronger identity is rare and unusual web-novel fanfiction.

Search for Naruto fanfiction and you’ll find plenty.

Search for Harry Potter fanfiction and you could probably spend years reading.

The same applies to many enormous anime and entertainment franchises.

But start searching for fanfiction based on certain Chinese web novels and the results become much thinner.

That’s unfortunate.

Some of those universes are enormous.

Perfect World alone presents countless possibilities for original characters, alternate timelines, different bloodlines, ancient inheritances and new cultivation paths.

Renegade Immortal offers another type of cultivation world that can support completely different stories.

And that’s before considering the enormous number of other Chinese novels, Eastern fantasy worlds and cultivation universes that could produce fascinating fanfiction.

DaoScroll wants to give these stories room alongside more familiar fandoms.

System Novels, Cultivation and Progression Fantasy

There is another type of reader we understand very well.

The reader who sees:

System Activated.

And immediately knows they’re probably going to read another fifty chapters.

System fiction has become incredibly flexible.

There are leveling systems.

Sign-in systems.

Return systems.

Cultivation systems.

Evolution systems.

Achievement systems.

Disciple systems.

Sect systems.

Gacha systems.

Simulation systems.

And probably another ridiculous system being invented while you’re reading this paragraph.

DaoScroll embraces this side of web fiction.

The same goes for cultivation and progression fantasy.

Watching a protagonist grow from an unknown nobody into someone capable of shaking entire worlds is one of the most satisfying parts of long-form serialized fiction.

These are exactly the kinds of stories we want readers to be able to discover easily.

DaoScroll Is Still Growing

Perhaps the biggest difference between DaoScroll and Webnovel, Wattpad, Royal Road, AO3 or FanFiction.net is simply age.

Those platforms already have enormous histories.

DaoScroll is writing its beginning.

That means our library is growing.

Our traffic is growing.

Our design is evolving.

Our discovery systems are improving.

Our reader experience is being refined.

New functionality is being developed.

And feedback from actual readers can still have a meaningful influence on what the platform becomes.

We don’t see being young as something to hide.

It means the story of DaoScroll hasn’t already been written.

Which Web-Novel Platform Should You Use?

The answer doesn’t have to be only one.

Use AO3 when you’re looking for its enormous fanwork archive and powerful tagging ecosystem.

Use Wattpad when you want its social storytelling community.

Use Royal Road when you’re exploring its established web-serial ecosystem.

Use FanFiction.net when you’re searching its long-running fandom archives.

Use Webnovel for the enormous catalog and ecosystem it has built around serialized fiction and fanfiction.

And give DaoScroll a try when you’re looking for another place to discover cultivation, systems, progression fantasy, translated web fiction and fanfiction — particularly the stranger corners of web fiction that don’t always receive as much attention.

The internet doesn’t need one website containing every story.

It needs different communities that make different kinds of stories easier to discover.

That’s the space we want DaoScroll to grow into.

Come Back and See What DaoScroll Becomes

If you’re visiting DaoScroll today, remember what it looks like.

Seriously.

Because we’re still working.

The UI will improve.

The UX will evolve.

The library will grow.

Discovery will become better.

Reader features will continue developing.

And there are plenty of things we still want to build.

But one principle will remain at the center:

Find a story. Open a chapter. Enjoy reading.

Everything else should make that experience better, not get in its way.

If you enjoy cultivation novels, system fiction, reincarnation, regression, progression fantasy, translated web novels or fanfiction from both popular and uncommon universes, come explore DaoScroll.com.

Maybe you’ll find your next favorite novel.

Or maybe you’ll discover a story you never thought to search for.

DaoScroll — Ocean of Web Novels.