Google search, Bing search, or Yahoo search. But have you ever tried the DuckDuckGo search? It’s a search engine that doesn’t track you and has everything (like suggestions, image search, video search, etc.) you expect from a search engine.
There’s a very good chance that we end up using only the most popular websites on the web because they are just everywhere. However, it doesn’t really mean that they’re the best websites on the Internet.
Needless to say, “popular” isn’t necessarily the best. And that’s how I decided to come up with a list of extremely useful (and probably less-known) websites on the web.
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The Fantastic Hundred Websites
Whether you’re a student, a professional, or a homemaker, I have hand-picked one hundred most useful websites for you — to get things done, or to spend time with, or to find something interesting. And no, it doesn’t include the Facebooks and Amazons of the world.
- 500px — Get inspired with incredible photos from diverse styles and genres around the world.
- About.me — Create your free, one-page website in just a few minutes.
- Airbnb — Rent unique accommodations from local hosts in 191+ countries.
- Alexa — See the top 500 websites on the web.
- Allrecipes — Find and share everyday cooking inspiration on Allrecipes.
- AlternativeTo — AlternativeTo lets you find apps and software by recommending alternatives to apps you already know.
- Archive.today — Take a ‘snapshot’ of a webpage that will always be online even if the original page disappears.
- Asana — Manage your team’s work, projects, and tasks online.
- AutoDraw — AutoDraw pairs machine learning with drawings from talented artists to help you draw stuff fast.
- Awesome Screenshot — Screen capture for all or part of any web page. Add annotations, comments, blur sensitive info, and share with one-click uploads.
- Bitly — A URL shortener and link management service.
- BlaBlaCar — BlaBlaCar is the world’s leading long distance carpooling service, connecting drivers with empty seats to people travelling the same way.
- BugMeNot — Access and share logins for websites that require you to register in order to view content.
- Calm — Relax with Calm, a simple mindfulness meditation app that brings clarity and peace of mind into your life.
- Canva — Create designs for Web or print: blog graphics, presentations, Facebook covers, flyers, posters, invitations and so much more.
- Cheatography — Over 4,000 free cheat sheets, revision aids and quick references.
- Clarity — Clarity is a service that helps you find, schedule and pay for expert advice over the phone to help you be more productive and grow your business.
- Clip Converter — Clip Converter is a free online media conversion application, which allows you to record, convert and download nearly any audio or video URL (from YouTube, Vimeo, etc.) to common formats.
- Coolors.co — Create the perfect palette or get inspired by thousands of beautiful color schemes.
- CopyPasteCharacter — Copy paste characters (emojis, graphic shapes, numerals, symbols, currencies, arrows, etc.).
- Couchsurfing — Couchsurfers share their homes, cities and lives in profound in meaningful ways, making travel anywhere in the world a truly social experience.
- Dailymotion — Dailymotion is a video-sharing website where you can upload, watch, and share videos.
- Diigo — Diigo is a powerful research tool and a knowledge-sharing community.
- Down For Everyone Or Just Me — Check if a website is down or up.
- Dropbox Paper — Dropbox Paper is the best way for teams to collaborate — share ideas, give feedback on your files, and track tasks all in the same doc.
- DuckDuckGo — A superior search experience with smarter answers, less clutter and real privacy.
- E.gg Timer — E.ggTimer.com is a simple countdown timer, or egg timer.
- Evernote — Collect, nurture, and share ideas across desktop and mobile platforms with Evernote.
- Fake Name Generator — Generate a random name with full address and personal details.
- Fax Zero — Send faxes for free to anywhere in the U.S. and Canada.
- Feedly — A single place to easily read all the news you rely on to think, learn, and keep ahead.
- Fiverr — Fiverr is the world’s largest marketplace for digital services — buy & sell small services starting at $5.
- FollowUpThen — Free easy email reminders.
- FutureMe — Write a letter to the future: set goals for yourself, make a prediction about the world.
- The Freecycle Network — The Freecycle Network is a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (and getting) stuff for free in their own towns.
- Ge.tt — Ge.tt is an instant, real-time file publishing and sharing service.
- Goodreads — Discover and share books you love on Goodreads, the world’s largest site for readers and book recommendations.
- Grammarly — Online proofreading tool that checks text for grammar, punctuation, and style, and features a contextual spelling checker and plagiarism detector.
- Groupon — Discover and save on 1000s of great deals at nearby restaurants, spas, things to do, shopping, travel and more.
- Guerrilla Mail — Guerrilla Mail gives you a disposable email address. Also try, 10 Minute Mail.
- Hide My Ass — Try Hide My Ass free proxy to surf anonymously and protect your online identity.
- Hulu — Hulu brings you instant access to all of your favorite TV shows, the hottest new series and great films, all in one place.
- Iconfinder — Iconfinder is the world’s largest marketplace for vector and raster icons in SVG and PNG formats.
- IFTTT — IFTTT lets you connect the apps and devices you use every day, such as Amazon Alexa, Facebook, Twitter, Fitbit, Slack, and more. Also try, Zapier.
- iLovePDF — Every tool you need to work with PDFs in one place.
- IMDb — IMD is the world’s most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV and celebrity content.
- Imgur — Imgur is the best place to share and enjoy the most awesome images on the Internet.
- InstaCalc — Get answers as you type numbers using natural language.
- Investing.com — Investing.com offers free real time quotes, portfolio, streaming charts, financial news, live stock market data and more.
- Join.me — Collaborate instantly with free screen sharing, unlimited audio, and simple video conferencing.
- JustWatch — Get personal recommendations for movies and TV shows available on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hotstar and many more.
- Kaspersky Secure Password Checker — Test your password.
- Khan Academy — Khan Academy is a nonprofit with the mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.
- Last.fm — Online music catalog with free music streaming, videos, photos, lyrics, charts, artist biographies, concerts and internet radio.
- LastPass — LastPass remembers your passwords so that you can focus on the more important things in life. Also try, LastPass Password Generator.
- Listly — Make cool lists and fun listicles on Listly, share them on Facebook and Twitter, and embed them on your blog or website.
- LiveJournal — A service for journals and blogs, that also offers privacy controls, photo storage, publishing tools, style templates, and online communities for many interests.
- Lyft — Request a ride with the tap of a button, and get picked up by a nearby community driver who’ll take you to your destination within minutes. Also try, Uber.
- Medium — Medium is a publishing platform to read, write, and interact with the stories that matter most to you.
- Meetup — Meetup brings people together in thousands of cities to do more of what they want to do in life.
- Mint — Manage your money, pay your bills and track your credit score with Mint.
- Namechk — Use Namechk to search for an available username or domain and secure your brand across the web.
- Natural Readers — Upload text and documents or convert to mp3 to listen to anywhere anytime.
- Netflix — Watch Netflix movies & TV shows online or stream right to your smart TV, game console, PC, Mac, mobile, tablet and more.
- Office.com — Collaborate for free with an online version of Microsoft Office suite.
- Pablo — Design engaging images for your social media posts in under 30 seconds.
- Pandora — Pandora is free, personalized radio that plays music you’ll love.
- Pastebin — Pastebin lets you store text online for a set period of time.
- PayPal — PayPal is the faster, safer way to send money, make an online payment, receive money or set up a merchant account.
- Periscope — Periscope lets you broadcast and explore the world through live video.
- Pixlr — An online photo editor that lets you edit photos and create great designs right in your browser.
- Pocket — Pocket is your place to quickly save, discover, and recommend the stories that interest you.
- Popurls — Popurls encapsulates headlines from the most popular websites on a single page.
- Print Friendly & PDF — Make a Printer Friendly & PDF version of any webpage. Also try, PrintWhatYouLike.
- Quora — Quora is a place where you can ask questions you care about and get answers that are amazing.
- Rainy Mood — Rainy Mood is the world’s most popular rain simulator.
- Random — Generate true random numbers.
- Reddit — Reddit is a social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website where your votes shape what the world is talking about.
- Remove.bg — Remove image background in 5 seconds for free with just one-click.
- Robinhood — Robinhood is a stock brokerage that allows customers to buy and sell U.S. listed stocks and ETFs with $0 commission.
- Screenfly — Test a website on any screen size including desktops, tablets, televisions, and mobile phones.
- Scribd — A digital documents library that allows users to publish, discover and discuss original writings and documents in various languages.
- Shazam — Identify music that’s playing and see what others are discovering.
- SlideShare — Offers users the ability to upload and share publicly or privately PowerPoint presentations, Word documents and Adobe PDF Portfolios.
- Similar Sites — Similar Sites helps you find related sites and topics similar to the ones you love.
- SoundCloud — SoundCloud is an audio platform that lets you listen to what you love and share the sounds you create.
- Speedtest — An interactive broadband speed test.
- Splitwise — It’s a free tool that lets you track bills and share expenses with your friends and family, so that everyone gets paid back.
- Spotify — Spotify is a digital music service that gives you access to millions of songs.
- Stack Exchange — Stack Exchange is a network of 100+ question and answer communities on everything from software programming to cooking, photography, and gaming.
- StumbleUpon — StumbleUpon is the easiest way to discover new and interesting web pages, photos and videos across the Web.
- Supercook — Supercook is a recipe search engine that lets you search by ingredients you have at home.
- Techmeme — Techmeme is a one-page technology news aggregator.
- TED — TED Talks are influential videos from expert speakers on education, business, science, tech and creativity, with subtitles in 100+ languages.
- Time And Date —World clock, time zones, calendar, weather, timer, stopwatch, countdown to any date, date calculators, and more.
- TuneFind — TuneFind contains an index of music and songs appearing in popular television shows and movies.
- Trading Economics — Get free economic indicators, Historical Data, Charts, News and Forecasts for 196 countries.
- Trello — Trello gives you perspective over all your projects, at work and at home.
- Truecaller — Truecaller helps identify unknown incoming calls, warns against unwanted calls through a community based spam list.
- Tumblr — Post anything (from anywhere!), customize everything, and find and follow what you love.
- TypeRacer — Test your typing speed and learn to type faster.
- Udemy — Udemy is an online learning and teaching marketplace with over 40000 courses and 12 million students.
- Unsplash — Beautiful, high-resolution, free images and photos that you can download and use for any project.
- Upwork — Find freelancers and freelance jobs.
- Vimeo — Watch, upload and share HD and 4k videos with no ads.
- Wattpad — Wattpad is a community for readers and writers where you can discover user-generated stories from almost all genres.
- Wayback Machine — Explore more than 273 billion web pages saved over time.
- WeTransfer — WeTransfer is a free service to send big or small files from A to B.
- WindowSwap — Open a new window somewhere in the world.
- Wolfram|Alpha — Wolfram|Alpha gives you access to the world’s facts and data and calculates answers across a range of topics, including science, nutrition, history, geography, engineering, mathematics, linguistics, sports, finance, music, etc.
- Yelp — Yelp connects people with great local businesses.
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Closing Thoughts
It’s very well possible that you already know a lot of websites that are listed here. However, I shortlisted the above websites as those are the ones that I often visit and I want others to explore these too.
Additionally, you can probe into:
…for a ton of useful websites on the Internet — organized by categories and subcategories.
If you know any other (less known) useful websites that’s missing in this list then do let me know as a comment below and I will add it to the list. Also, let me know if you think I must replace a website with its better alternative.
Happy Web Browsing! 🙂
First Published: October 27, 2016; Last Updated: Wednesday, February 2, 2021.
