What are the big 3 of webnovels?

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Two trios, one phrase

The phrase "big 3 of webnovels" is used by two communities that do not read the same websites, and that is the first thing to get straight. In Chinese forums it means Qidian, Zongheng and Jinjiang. In English forums it means Wuxiaworld, Webnovel and Gravity Tales.

Neither list is a ranking. No platform calls itself one of the big three, and no body keeps the score. It is shorthand for "the sites everyone knows" — nothing more. It depends on the language you ask in. That is the whole confusion.

The Chinese trio, and the case against it

Qidian is the one nobody argues about. It launched the paid-chapter model every other site copied, it has the deepest catalogue of male-oriented fantasy, and it sits inside Yuewen, the listed company that owns most of the industry. If the phrase means anything at all, it means Qidian and two others. That is the whole test.

Zongheng is the second name. It was the serious rival of the early 2010s, with a catalogue of martial and historical fiction that fans of the period still defend. Its founders left Qidian. That is why the two are always named together, and why its early list reads like the same imagination with the paperwork removed. Same room. Fewer receipts.

Jinjiang is the third, and it is the odd one — the only name on the list that answers a different question. It is built for female-oriented fiction, romance and danmei, and it does not overlap much with the other two at all. Its inclusion is the interesting part. The trio is a summary of a market by audience — not a ranking of competitors. Read the list that way — by audience rather than rank — and it stops looking random.

The case against it is straightforward. Yuewen owns Qidian and other platforms that belong on any honest list. Meanwhile the free-to-read app model has more readers than any paid site, and is usually left out anyway. Too new for the phrase. There is also a rival trio in circulation: Qidian, the free app and the fanfiction site. It reflects a 2020s map better than the older one does.

The English trio, and the member that closed

The English trio describes the translation scene as it was around 2017. Three sites had the catalogue and the translators.

Wuxiaworld came first. It started as a fan project translating Jin Yong, then the long cultivation serials. It grew into a real business on one insight: readers would pay to read ahead. That was the whole insight. Its early success came from something narrower. A reader who does not know the word dantian has no idea where a character's power is stored. So the site had to explain the body before it could sell the plot.

Webnovel is the corporate answer, launched as the international arm of Qidian and backed by the parent company's rights. It did not need to negotiate for licences, because it owned them, and that single fact decided the fight that followed. Its editorial line is the Chinese one. The same Eastern fantasy shelves, retitled for a foreign audience, pushed to the top of the front page on day one. Qi Condensation, Foundation Establishment, Golden Core — the whole ladder, sold as a ladder. No guessing — no curation either.

Gravity Tales was the second fan site, behind Wuxiaworld. In 2017 it took a deal with the corporate side. Its library and translators were absorbed. The site went dark in mid-2020. Every list that still names it describes a market that no longer exists.

So the English trio has had a vacancy since 2020. Nothing has filled it cleanly. The older jianghu spirit of translation — small teams, running commentary, readers arguing in the comments — went with it. A translator in the old tradition — careful notes, slow chapters — has fewer places to publish than the word suggests. Wuxiaworld kept going. Webnovel kept its position. The third slot went to Royal Road, which hosts original English serials rather than translations. A different business sharing a shelf. Nobody agrees on it.

Why the phrase survived the fact

The phrase is useful. It answers a question people actually ask. Where does everyone read these things? The answer changes slowly. The companies change fast.

Every one of the six sells the same arc. A stranger arrives in a sect structure he does not understand, is judged worthless, and works out that the ladder is climbable.

Readers come back for one scene. The first time the hero realises that spiritual energy is not a metaphor. It is a bill.

Which is why the prose of a translation matters more than the ranking does. A site that explains its own terms keeps a reader for a thousand chapters. One that assumes the reader already knows them loses him at chapter four. Not always. Often.

All six are doing the same thing. Buy or host a chapter. Sell the next one. That model made the genre long, and it makes a translation's chapter supply an ongoing cost — not a one-off licence. Which is why nobody ever finishes.

If you are reading translated fiction, the practical question is smaller. Two sites cover almost everything. The Chinese trio matters for another reason. It tells you where a story started. That is how you check whether what you read is authorised, and how far behind the source it is. Which sounds academic. It is not.

What the three names actually tell you

A quick way to use all of this.

If someone says "big 3" and you do not know which country they mean, ask which one.

If you want to read, ignore the phrase. Wuxiaworld or Webnovel for translations, Royal Road for originals.

If you want to write, the phrase is nearly useless. What matters is the contract, the audience and the update schedule. Those differ per platform far more than a list of three implies. The contract is usually an outright purchase of the manuscript, or a share of what readers spend.

The questions this page keeps drawing

No, and nobody publishes a table that decides it. No platform calls itself one of the big three, and there is no governing body that ranks them. The phrase is reader shorthand that hardened through repetition, which is why two communities can use it about six different companies and both feel correct.

It did. The site went dark in mid-2020 after being folded into Webnovel, and its library and translators were absorbed. So the English trio people still quote describes the market as it was around 2017, not the market now. The three names survive because the recommendation lists never got updated.

For translated cultivation fiction, Wuxiaworld and Webnovel cover almost everything worth reading, and Royal Road carries the original English serials. The Chinese trio matters for a different reason: it tells you where the source lives, which is how you check whether a translation is authorised or how far behind it is.

Sources & References

• Yuewen Group (China Literature Limited), listing document business section — the platform's own account of how it licenses content, including the distinction between outright purchase and revenue share. https://www1.hkexnews.hk/listedco/listconews/sehk/2017/1108/a11883/CCHINALIT-20170630-16.PDF
• The Paper, 武侠世界: 网文出海的另一个江湖 — a reported account of the Wuxiaworld and Qidian International split in 2017, and of the agreement that took the second fan site into the corporate fold. https://m.thepaper.cn/baijiahao_12654488
• Novel Updates forum, "The doom of gravity tales" thread (May 2020) — contemporaneous reader posts from the week the site went offline, which is the closest thing to a primary record of the closure.
• DaoSearch, Chinese web novels beginner's guide — a platform-by-platform breakdown of catalogue size and business model, useful for checking which sites are actually large. https://daosearch.io/blog/chinese-web-novels-beginners-guide
• Wuxiaworld, General Glossary of Terms — the site's own definitions page, the clearest surviving example of how an English translation platform taught its readers a foreign idiom. https://www.wuxiaworld.com/page/general-glossary-of-terms