This is a list of cool, awesome, and useful websites that a lot of people don't know. I've decided to save these here so others can benefit (and I can find them again).
There's no hard criteria for inclusion, but keep a few basics in mind:
✔️ The site should be generally useful and/or cool.
✔️ The site should offer a useful free tier.
❌ No malware or scams of any kind.
❌ No paywalls.
If you have a new site to contribute, or found a broken/invalid site, feel free to send a PR or open an issue.
Make sure to ⭐ star the repo on github if you like the content.
- libgen: Download almost any book and textbook in electronic format.
- ManualsLib: View online manuals for many different products.
- Petrucci Music Library: Giant collection of public domain music scores.
- Project Gutenberg: Giant collection of classic books, sheet music, etc, available for free.
- Sci Hub: Free access to white paper downloads.
- These sites allow you to generate disposable and temporary email addresses:
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Check your grammar with these free tools:
- Grammarly
- Hemingway App
- QuillBot: Offers lots of options, including paraphraser, grammar checker, etc...
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DeepL: Translate between many different languages.
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Etymonline: Find the origins of a word with this comprehensive and free English etymology dictionary.
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Reverse dictionary: Enter a word, phrase, description, or pattern to find related words.
- Just Beam It: Transfer a file directly from your browser to another.
- We Transfer: Transfer files of up to 2GB online for free.
- Wormhole.app: Encrypted, peer-to-peer file transfer.
- Phoboslab Ztype: Fun spaceship typing game with awesome sound effects.
- My Abandonware: Download abandonware games from 1978-2010.
- Oldgames Download: Archival website with a database of abandonware from the 70s to early 2000s, including Arcade, C64, DOS, PlayStation, Sega, Windows and more.
- CheapShark: Compare the prices of many games across stores.
- Eat this Much: Create a personalized meal plan based on your food preferences, budget, and schedule.
- Muscle Wiki: Choose muscles on a body diagram and see videos on how to exercise them.
- Noises Online: Decompress from your day with relaxing sounds.
- BigJPG: Use AI to increase the size of your images.
- CleanPNG: Clean and free PNG images, with transparent backgrounds, ready to use.
- Free stock photos, images & videos: Pexels, Pixabay, Unsplash.
- Online OCR: Free online OCR service.
- Online PNG Tools: Large number of tools to manipulate your PNGs online.
- Photopea: Feature rich, free, online image editor (see also Pixlr).
- remove.bg: Uses AI to remove the background of pictures. Does an incredible job, but the free version is limited to low resolution images.
- tldraw.com: A simple, no frills vector based online sketching page.
- tinyPNG: Smart WebP, PNG, and JPEG compression.
- 12ft: Bypass paywalls and removes ads from webpages. Nothing to install, just copy and paste the link.
- archive.org: Millions of free music, books, and software downloads. Also home to the Wayback Machine, which allows you to see the state of a page at many points in the past.
- Highlight: Console Living Room: Play many classic arcade games directly from your web browser.
- archive.today: Save any page on the web forever. Share the link to the saved paged with friends (chrome extension available.)
- copychar: Find special characters and emoji, and copy them into the clipboard.
- Down Detector: Is a website/service down for everybody or just for you?
- Down for everyone or just me?: Another site to check the status of popular internet websites.
- Emojipedia: Find the right emoji for the occasion.
- Fast: Simple site to check your network connection speed.
- Have I been Pwned: Check if your passwords and other data leaked in any data breach.
- I Love PDF: Many tools to manipulate PDF files (merge, split, convert, organize, add watermark, etc...)
- Namech_k: For a given name, check multiple domains and social media username presence. Useful when choosing site and product names.
- PDF Escape: Free PDF editor and form filler. No need to print and fill PDFs by hand.
- Privnote: Send notes that will self-destruct after being read.
- Terms of Service, Didn't Read: Provides a human readable summary of various terms of service and ranks them for privacy.
- Virus Total: Check a website (links) or a file for virus and malware.
- Animated Knots: Learn how to tie different knots with clear 3D animations.
- futureme: Write a letter to the future. Allows you to send your future self an email. Remember what you were thinking a number of years ago and see how your life has been going.
- Text Smileys Generator: Generate "Lenny Faces" for any situation. :)
- thispersondoesnotexist.com: AI generated faces of non-existent people. A new and unique face on every page refresh.
- Where is this?: Send a picture and have the location it was taken identified.
- You're getting old!: Report full of interesting stuff based on your birthdate.
- Get Human: Shortcuts to get a human on the phone faster when calling customer service numbers.
- Just the Recipe: Get just the ingredients and instructions for any recipe. No life story, no pop-ups, no email lists.
- Post-Retirement FIRE calculator: Will your money survive early retirement?
- Still Tasty: How long will your favorite food or beverage stay safe and tasty?
- Supercook: Helps you figure out dinner based on what you already have in the house.
- This to that: Shows you what glue to use to stick anything to anything.
- WTF Should I make for dinner: Same concept: Tell the site what you have and see a list of possible recipes.
- car-part.com: Locate the nearest recycler that has specific parts for your car.
- CamelCamelCamel: See Amazon price history and set email alerts for any product.
- Pika Pika deals: Discover deals across Amazon, Target, and Bestbuy.
- ReviewMeta: Review Amazon reviews and provide an adjusted rating.
- I have no TV: Access to a large curated list of documentaries that you can watch online for free.
- radio.garden: Listen to radio stations around the world.
- ADS-B Exchange: Flight tracker and mapper, using crowdsourced data.
- FlightAware: Another real-time flight tracker.
- Flight Radar 24: See a map of aircraft flying around any location, including aircraft type, airspeed, altitude, and flight plan. Also provides details on specific flights (Note: they deprecated their paid app a while ago and moved to a subscription model, rendering paid apps useless and upsetting a lot of people a few years ago. Tread carefully if you plan to purchase anything from them.)
- National Weather Service: The venerable weather.gov website. No ads, registration or frills. Just precise weather information when you need it.