Free Chinese Web Novels: Fanqie, Qimao and JJWXC's Free Shelf

"Is it free?" is the first thing people ask about a raw, and the answer depends on the platform more than on the book. Some charge for every chapter past the opening. Some charge nothing and show ads. One mixes both on the same site.

A note before the details: DaoSearch doesn't host chapters. Free and paid here describe what happens on the platform itself when you follow a book's Source link. What you get on this site is the catalogue: every book's title, synopsis, tags and reader figures in English, so you can decide what's worth opening.

The six platforms at a glance

The paid platforms all let you start a book for nothing. The wall comes later, once the book has hooked you.

Fanqie and Qimao: free, and built the same way

Fanqie and Qimao are apps of the same kind. Reading costs nothing, the platform earns from advertising, and authors are paid on how much their books get read. Qimao launched in 2018 and Fanqie in 2019, and the free model has since taken a large share of readers from the pay-per-chapter sites.

That model shapes the books. A free platform rewards a novel that hooks in the first few chapters and keeps a reader scrolling, so both catalogues lean toward fast openings, clear premises and long runs. What free does to a catalogue, in detail.

From a reader's side they differ in three ways.

Size and mix. Fanqie is far the larger, the second biggest catalogue on DaoSearch, and its heart is romance and urban fiction. Qimao is a fraction of the size and split cleanly into a male and a female channel. A large share of what Qimao serves isn't web fiction at all (print editions, audiobooks, short stories), and we leave that out.

The numbers. Fanqie counts reads, twice: a current figure and a lifetime one, plus a score and a shelf count. Qimao counts Popularity, Readers and Must-read votes, plus a score with the number of ratings behind it, and a Heat figure its boards rank by. None of these compare across the two. Fanqie's numbers and Qimao's each have a guide.

The boards. Fanqie is a feed first, and its ranking boards are few and shallow. Qimao publishes seventeen boards, each for male and female readers and each sliced by category, including two for finished books. If you like starting from a chart, Qimao gives you more to work with: try Must-Read or Newly Completed for female readers.

Browsing them well

A free catalogue has no gate, so filtering matters more than on a paid one. These are good first views:

• Completed Fanqie novels by all-time reads: the finished books that got big and stayed big.
• Completed Fanqie novels scored 9 or more with 100k lifetime reads: the same, with a floor on reader score.
• Completed Qimao novels by Must-read votes: books readers actively vouch for. Add Audience: Female to switch channels.
• Completed Qimao novels scored 9.5 or more by at least 1k raters.

Both platforms also have reader-made booklists. Fanqie's are long, often hundreds of books. Qimao's are short and usually titled like a request. How to use them.

JJWXC: the free shelf on a paid site

JJWXC is the home of danmei, baihe and female-oriented romance, and it's a paid site with a twist. Not every book goes VIP. A popular serial usually does: the opening chapters stay open and the rest are sold by the chapter. But a great many books never do, and they stay free from the first chapter to the last.

That shelf is hard to pick out from English. Here the Access filter does it:

• Free, completed JJWXC novels by favorites
• Free, completed, with 10k favorites or more
• Free completed danmei and free completed romance

"Paid (VIP)" in that filter means the book has VIP chapters. Every JJWXC book page says which it is, as a chip beside its theme and POV.

Free JJWXC novels are often shorter. Add a favorites floor and what's left is a shelf of finished books that a real audience loved. More on finding danmei there.

Qidian, Zongheng and Faloo: paid, with a free start

The other three sell chapters. A book opens free, and somewhere past the early chapters it goes behind a paywall. Readers who pay also get votes to spend, which is where the monthly ticket boards come from: Qidian's monthly votes, Zongheng's monthly tickets and Faloo's.

Those boards are the upside of a paid platform for someone choosing a book. A vote that cost money is hard to fake, so the ranking means something. How Qidian's boards work.

The paid sites are where cultivation, long fantasy epics and fanfiction live. If that's what you came for, a free app won't replace them.

The same novel, free somewhere else

Novels get licensed between platforms. A book that sells chapters on a paid site is sometimes also carried by a free app.

When we list the same novel on more than one platform, its page says so in a line under the buttons: "Also on", with a link for each. 元尊 on Zongheng is one. When we checked, its page read "Also on Qidian · Qimao". Zongheng and Qidian are paid, Qimao is free.

So before you decide a book is out of reach, open its page and look for that line. The link goes to the other platform's page for the novel here, and the Source link on that page goes to the book itself. More on finding where a novel lives.

Which one to open

• Romance, urban, contemporary, fast reads: Fanqie first, then Qimao's female channel.
• Free and you'd like a chart to start from: Qimao.
• Danmei, baihe, shorter character-driven novels: JJWXC with Access set to Free.
• Cultivation, xuanhuan, long epics: Qidian or Zongheng, and check "Also on" for a free copy.
• Anime and film fanfiction: Faloo.

Whichever you pick, finished is the filter that matters most on a free platform. Set Status to Completed, or turn on Hide dropped to take out unfinished books that went quiet. How Hide dropped and the minimum filters work.

And if what you want is to read in English, the main button on each book page goes to RandomTranslator, our sister site: Read the translation where one exists, Request a translation where it doesn't.

Explore the catalogue: Fanqie (novels, rankings, stats); Qimao (novels, rankings, stats); JJWXC (novels, rankings, stats); Qidian (novels, rankings, stats); Zongheng (novels, rankings, stats); Faloo (novels, rankings, stats).