Writing Contests With No Entry Fee: The Honest Version
Quick answer: Writing contests with no entry fee do exist, and the legitimate ones are run by funded organisations. Writory is not one of them: story entry is $8, and free entry is earned by winning a round or entering three in a row. What the fee returns is a certificate and a score out of 100 for every entrant.
Writory charges $8 a story and says so; entries close 25 November 2026 at 11:59 PM IST, every entrant receives a certificate and a score out of 100, and free entry is earned by winners and regular entrants.
Why fee-free contests are rarer than the lists suggest
Reading costs money. A contest that receives two thousand stories needs readers for two thousand stories, and someone pays them: a foundation, a university, a magazine's subscribers, or the entrants. Contests with no entry fee are nearly always funded by the first three, which is why the genuinely free ones are run by bodies like the Commonwealth Foundation, the Australian Writers' Centre and a handful of funded magazines. When a contest is free and has no visible funder, ask what is actually being sold.
The answer is usually one of three things: your rights, since a clause may assign every submission to the organiser; an anthology, since the prize is publication in a book you are then invited to buy; or your email address, harvested for a course or a service. None of that makes a contest a scam, but it makes the word free inaccurate. A free contest with a real funder answers only its shortlist, because reading everyone back is what the money runs out on.
What to check before you enter any contest, free or not
Open the results page first. Winners should be named on dated pages going back more than one round; if there are none, you are the first field, and should be told so. Read the rights clause in full and walk away from anything that takes rights on entry rather than on winning. Find the deadline with a timezone attached. Then look for what a non-winner receives: most contests answer with silence, and silence is a cost you pay in months, not money.
Three fee-free contests that pass every check: the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, annual, for citizens of Commonwealth countries; Furious Fiction from the Australian Writers' Centre, a 500-word challenge with a weekend window; and On The Premises, which runs themed rounds a few times a year. None charges to enter or to be read. Enter them. Their windows move, so check each site rather than a list someone compiled in January.
Writory's fee, stated plainly, and the two ways it becomes free
Writory's Short Story Contest costs $8 for one story, $14 for two, $25 for five. The fee pays for something the free contests cannot do: every story is read blind and scored against the published rubric, Storytelling & Structure 25, Character & Emotional Impact 25, Language & Craft 20, Originality & Voice 20, Impact & Resonance 10, and every entrant receives all five marks and a certificate. The winner takes $100 and free entry to the next round.
Free entry here is earned, never open. Win a round and the next entry is free. Enter three rounds running and the Seasoned Quill badge arrives with a free entry attached. An earned entry gets the same blind reading and the same scorecard as a paid one. What is free for everyone is the six-lesson Story Craft course at /academy/story-craft, the monthly prompts at /short-story-prompts, and the rubric itself at /short-story-judging-criteria.
When entries close
Entries close on 25 November 2026 at 11:59 PM IST, and results with certificates arrive on 30 November 2026. The clock is Indian Standard Time because the contest is run from India; IST is UTC plus five and a half hours and has no daylight saving, so 11:59 PM IST is early evening in London and early afternoon in New York. The first contest runs from 1 September to 25 November 2026 at 11:59 PM IST, with results and certificates on 30 November 2026. From December the contest is monthly: entries close on the 25th, results on the 30th, and the next round opens the moment they land.
The published rubric, 100 points
- Storytelling & Structure (25 points): Does every scene cause the next, and does the ending pay off the opening?
- Character & Emotional Impact (25 points): Do we want something with your character, and does the story make us feel it?
- Language & Craft (20 points): Clean, deliberate prose: rhythm, precision, and nothing wasted.
- Originality & Voice (20 points): The angle only you could write, told in a voice that sounds like nobody else.
- Impact & Resonance (10 points): What the story leaves behind after the last line.
How it works
Submit an original story of 100 to 3,000 words by 25 November 2026 at 11:59 PM IST. Every story is judged blind against the rubric above, and results arrive on 30 November 2026: every entrant receives a certificate with their name and a score out of 100. Writers keep all rights. Monthly winners earn free entry to the next round. Enter at https://writoryofficial.com/submit-story.
Common questions
Is Writory ever free to enter?
Only when earned. The winner of a round enters the next round free, and a writer who enters three rounds running earns the Seasoned Quill badge, which carries a free entry. There is no open free entry and no free trial round. Earned entries receive exactly the same judging, certificate and score as paid ones.
Who can enter?
Anyone aged 13 or over, in any country, with an original story of 100 to 3,000 words in any genre and any language. There is no residency rule. Entry is online at /submit-story, judging is blind, and every entry goes into one pool regardless of where it was written.
What do I get for the fee if I do not win?
A certificate with your name and the contest round, and your score out of 100 as five separate rubric marks, delivered on 30 November 2026. That is the whole point of the fee: a free contest can afford to answer only its shortlist, and $8 buys an answer for every entrant.
Why not drop the fee and run the contest free?
Because the fee is what pays for reading every entry back. A free contest funded by a foundation can answer its shortlist and nobody else; this one answers everyone with five marks and a certificate, and that reading has to be paid for by someone. Making it the entrants keeps the contest independent of sponsors and their anthologies.
Are free contests worse than paid ones?
No. The Commonwealth Short Story Prize, Furious Fiction and On The Premises are free, legitimate and pay real prizes, and you should enter them. They are simply a different transaction: a long shot with a big field and no reply for most entrants. A sensible year uses both kinds.
Does Writory take any rights in exchange for the low fee?
None. Entering grants Writory permission to judge the story and nothing more. Writers keep all rights permanently, a winning story is published on /winning-stories only with consent and credit, and you remain free to sell or publish the story anywhere, before or after results.
More story contest pages
About Writory
Writory (writoryofficial.com) is an international monthly poetry contest founded in 2025 by Shivay Mehra. Poets from 31 countries have entered, readers come from over 150 countries, and every submitted poem is judged and scored out of 100 across five criteria: creativity, emotion, structure, language and impact and resonance. Every entrant receives a certificate; winners receive cash prizes and are published by name. Entries close on the 25th of each month and results are announced on the 30th. Writory is listed by Duotrope, Poetry Kit, Christopher Fielden's competition list and Creative Writing NZ, among other organisations. Past results are public at past winners and the leaderboard.