Wattpad

User-generated fiction publishing and reading app, owned by Naver alongside Webtoon

As of 1 September 2026, Wattpad is free to use. A platform for amateur and semi-professional serialised fiction, free to read with an ad-supported model and a paid ad-free tier. Softwr lists it under Publishing. Wattpad is made by Wattpad Corp. (a Naver company), available on iOS, Android, Web.

Visit siteVisit Wattpad

Overview

What Wattpad does

Wattpad is a reading and writing platform for serialised fiction, spanning romance, fantasy, teen fiction and fan fiction, written largely by amateur and emerging authors and read chapter by chapter, often before a story is complete. It built its audience on free, ad-supported access to an enormous catalogue of user-submitted work, and several Wattpad-originated stories have been adapted into commercially released films and television series. Ownership links it directly to Webtoon. Naver, the South Korean internet company, acquired Wattpad in 2021 and merged it into the same corporate structure as Webtoon, its comics platform, positioning the two as a combined storytelling business spanning text and visual serialised fiction. Wattpad's revenue comes from advertising shown between chapters, a paid ad-free and offline-reading subscription called Wattpad Premium, and Wattpad Coins, an in-app virtual currency readers can spend to tip authors or unlock certain paid stories through the Paid Stories programme, from which participating authors earn a revenue share. Buyers here are readers wanting free, ongoing serialised fiction and emerging writers wanting an audience, and the trade-off is that only a small selected group of authors are paid at all, so most writing on the platform is unpaid, while readers get a very large catalogue at the cost of ads on the free tier and inconsistent update schedules from amateur authors.

What people use it for

A reader wanting free access to a large catalogue of ongoing, chapter-by-chapter serialised fiction
An amateur writer wanting to publish work chapter by chapter and build a following before seeking traditional publication
A frequent reader wanting an ad-free, offline-capable experience through Wattpad Premium
A fan wanting to tip a favourite author or unlock select paid stories through the Wattpad Coins system

Where it falls short

Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Wattpad.

Only a small, selected group of authors participate in the Paid Stories revenue-share programme, so the large majority of writers publishing on the platform earn nothing directly from their work being read.
The free tier is ad-supported with ads appearing between chapters, which interrupts reading flow in a way competitors with a purely subscription model do not.
Content moderation across a huge volume of user-submitted fiction has been an ongoing challenge, and mature or borderline content has periodically drawn scrutiny given the platform's substantial teenage user base.
Since the 2021 Naver acquisition and merger with Webtoon, product direction is set within a larger Korean media conglomerate strategy rather than independently, which has meant slower, less predictable feature development for the original Wattpad product.
Story completion and update frequency depend entirely on individual amateur authors, so readers following an ongoing story have no guarantee it will ever be finished.

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of Wattpad

Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.

Wattpadvs
Webtoon
Webtoon: If you want serialised visual comics rather than text fiction, from the same corporate parent

Pricing

What Wattpad costs

Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.

Free

Ad-supported reading of the full story catalogue
No offline downloads
Ads shown between chapters

Wattpad Premium

$4.99 /mo

Ad-free reading
Offline chapter downloads
Also offered at a discounted annual rate

Capabilities

Features

Free serialised fiction library
A large catalogue of user-submitted stories across genres, updated chapter by chapter
Wattpad Premium subscription
Paid tier removing ads and enabling offline chapter downloads
Wattpad Coins
In-app virtual currency for tipping authors and unlocking select paid stories
Paid Stories programme
Revenue share for a limited set of eligible authors whose stories are monetised through coins
Writing and publishing tools
In-app chapter drafting, cover creation and story management for authors
Wattpad Studios
Development arm adapting popular Wattpad stories into film and television projects

Answered, with sources

Questions people ask

Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

Is Wattpad free?

Yes, reading is free and ad-supported; Wattpad Premium removes ads and adds offline downloads for a monthly or annual fee.

Can writers make money on Wattpad?

A limited number of authors are selected into the Paid Stories programme and earn a share of Wattpad Coins spent on their work; most authors do not earn direct payment from the platform.

Who owns Wattpad?

Naver, the South Korean internet company that also owns Webtoon, acquired Wattpad in 2021.

Keep looking

Where to go from Wattpad

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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Wattpad, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.

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