I stumbled on a website last month that lets you see every edit ever made to any Wikipedia article in real time. Just a constant stream of humans around the world correcting typos, updating information, and occasionally starting edit wars about whether a hot dog is a sandwich.
I watched it for twenty minutes straight. It was hypnotic. Also completely useless for anything I was actually supposed to be doing that day.
The internet is full of these moments. Websites that teach you something completely unexpected, tools that solve problems you didn’t know you had, and experiences that make you remember why the web felt magical before algorithms decided what you should see.
The problem? These gems are nearly impossible to find through normal browsing. Google search optimization favors big sites. Social media algorithms push engagement over discovery. The weird, wonderful corners of the internet get buried under SEO spam and content farms.
So I’ve spent way too much time hunting for these places. The websites that make you stop and think “wait, this exists?” The ones you immediately want to share with someone. The ones worth actually saving instead of opening in a tab you’ll never look at again.
Here are twenty of them. Some are useful. Some are beautiful. Some are just wonderfully strange. All of them are worth knowing about.
For Learning Almost Anything#
1. Sketch.io: Drawing Without the Software#
You want to sketch something quickly. You don’t want to open Photoshop or hunt for drawing software. Sketch.io loads instantly in your browser and gives you a full-featured drawing tool that feels smooth and natural.
Multiple brush types, layers, symmetry tools, and the ability to export your work. It’s what browser-based creative tools should be: simple to start, powerful when you need it, and not trying to sell you a subscription.
Why it’s worth saving: Sometimes you just need to draw something. This removes every possible barrier between the idea and getting it out of your head.
2. Ncase: Interactive Explanations of Complex Ideas#
Nicky Case makes interactive explorations of complex topics that are genuinely engaging to play with. Game theory, anxiety, systems thinking, and more. Each one is beautifully designed and actually teaches you something instead of just telling you facts.
The whole library is free, open-source, and a reminder that educational content doesn’t have to be boring.
Why it’s worth saving: The next time you want to understand a complex concept, these interactive experiences will make it click faster than reading a Wikipedia article.
3. Brilliant: Problem-Solving Through Doing#
Brilliant teaches math, science, and computer science through interactive problem-solving. Instead of lectures and videos, you learn by working through challenges that build on each other.
The free tier gives you daily challenges. The paid tier unlocks full courses. Either way, it’s learning that feels like solving puzzles instead of memorizing facts.
Why it’s worth saving: For the moments when you want to actually understand something deeply instead of just skimming an article about it.
4. MyNoise: Soundscapes That Actually Help You Focus#
Every productivity person swears by white noise or lo-fi beats. MyNoise goes deeper. Custom soundscapes you can tune to your exact preferences. Rain, thunder, café ambiance, space engines, Tibetan singing bowls, whatever helps your brain focus.
The calibration feature tailors the sounds to your hearing. The slider interface lets you adjust individual components. It’s sound design for productivity that’s actually thoughtful.
Why it’s worth saving: Finding your perfect focus sound takes experimentation. Having the tool bookmarked means you’ll actually use it.
For Making Work Less Terrible#
5. Excalidraw: Sketching Ideas With Others in Real Time#
Need to diagram something quickly? Explain a concept to your team? Sketch out a rough idea? Excalidraw is a collaborative whiteboard that feels hand-drawn and completely frictionless.
No account required. Share a link and multiple people can draw together instantly. Export as image or SVG. That’s it. No enterprise features, no pricing tiers, just a tool that works.
Why it’s worth saving: Every remote meeting where someone says “let me just sketch this out” becomes immediately easier.
6. Hemingway Editor: Writing That Doesn’t Suck#
Paste your writing into Hemingway Editor and it highlights sentences that are too complex, words that could be simpler, and passive voice that weakens your message.
It’s not about making your writing sound like Hemingway. It’s about making your writing clear. Most business writing would benefit from this treatment.
Why it’s worth saving: The difference between writing people actually read and writing people skim past often comes down to clarity. This forces clarity.
7. Notion AI Templates: Starting Points Instead of Blank Pages#
Notion’s template gallery has thousands of templates for everything from meeting notes to project management to personal journaling. Many are created by the community and genuinely useful.
Starting from a template is faster than staring at a blank page trying to figure out what structure makes sense.
Why it’s worth saving: The next time you need to build something in Notion, you don’t start from zero. You adapt something that already works.
8. Untools: Thinking Tools for Problem-Solving#
Untools is a collection of mental models and frameworks presented as interactive tools. Decision matrices, first principles thinking, abstraction laddering, and more.
Each tool explains when to use it, how it works, and lets you work through it interactively. It’s like having a consultant walk you through structured thinking.
Why it’s worth saving: The next time you’re stuck on a problem, having a menu of thinking frameworks is surprisingly helpful.
For Discovering and Organizing#
9. Are.na: Collections as Creative Research#
Are.na is like if Pinterest and Tumblr had a baby that cared about thoughtful curation instead of viral content. People create channels (collections) around topics, ideas, or projects. Each channel becomes a visual research board.
It’s used by designers, researchers, artists, and anyone who thinks by collecting and connecting ideas. The community is small but the quality of curation is consistently high.
Why it’s worth saving: Sometimes you need to see how other people think about a topic, not just read articles about it.
10. The Marginalian: Long-Form Thinking Worth Your Time#
Maria Popova has been writing The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings) for years, creating thoughtful essays that connect art, science, philosophy, and literature. Each piece is deeply researched and genuinely worth the time investment.
In an internet of hot takes and shallow content, this is the opposite. Dense, interconnected thinking that rewards attention.
Why it’s worth saving: For the days when you want to read something that actually makes you think instead of just informing you.
For Making Things Beautiful#
11. Coolors: Color Palettes That Don’t Look Like 2015#
Coolors generates color palettes with a spacebar press. Lock colors you like, generate new options for the rest. Export in multiple formats. Adjust individual colors with sliders.
It’s fast, intuitive, and produces combinations that actually look good instead of the garish schemes most generators spit out.
Why it’s worth saving: The next time you need a color scheme for anything, this cuts decision time from hours to minutes.
12. Shots: Design Inspiration Without the Clutter#
Dribbble has become overrun with the same trendy aesthetics and concept work that will never be built. Shots curates better. Real projects, diverse styles, and less of the “I made a logo with a gradient for a crypto startup that doesn’t exist” content.
Why it’s worth saving: Good design inspiration should expand your aesthetic sense, not just show you the same trends on repeat.
13. Type Scale: Typography That Actually Works#
Type Scale generates harmonious font size systems based on established scales. Pick your base size and ratio, get a complete hierarchy that mathematically works together.
Typography is one of those things where understanding the rules helps even if you break them later. This teaches the rules by showing you what they produce.
Why it’s worth saving: Every time you’re setting up text styles for a project, this gives you a starting point that’s actually coherent.
For Exploring and Discovering#
14. The Pudding: Visual Essays Done Right#
The Pudding creates visual essays that use data and interaction to explain cultural phenomena. Why do we name hurricanes that way? How has music changed over time? What makes a song sound “happy”?
Each piece is beautifully designed, thoroughly researched, and engaging in ways that text alone never could be.
Why it’s worth saving: This is what longform journalism looks like when it’s designed for the internet instead of adapted from print.
15. Atlas Obscura: The Internet’s Weird Places Guide#
Atlas Obscura catalogs the world’s unusual places, hidden histories, and wondrous oddities. It’s travel writing for people who want to see the abandoned subway station under City Hall, not just another beach resort.
The articles are well-written, the photography is excellent, and the range of topics is genuinely surprising.
Why it’s worth saving: Even if you never visit these places, knowing they exist makes the world feel more interesting.
16. Internet Archive: The Web’s Memory#
The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine has saved billions of web pages going back decades. That blog post that disappeared? Probably archived. That website that went offline? Still accessible.
Beyond that, the archive hosts millions of books, movies, audio recordings, and software. It’s one of the most important projects on the internet.
Why it’s worth saving: The internet is more ephemeral than we realize. Having a way to access what’s been lost is invaluable.
17. Radio Garden: Every Radio Station on Earth#
Spin a globe and click anywhere to hear radio stations from that location. Live broadcasts from small towns in Mongolia, big cities in Brazil, remote islands in the Pacific.
It’s a reminder that the internet connects actual humans having actual experiences everywhere on the planet, not just the same social media feeds we all see.
Why it’s worth saving: Sometimes you want to hear what people on the other side of the world are listening to right now. This makes that possible.
For Pure Entertainment and Wonder#
18. Neal.fun: Internet Toys for Curious Minds#
Neal Agarwal creates interactive experiences that are educational, playful, and surprisingly deep. Draw a perfect circle. Spend Bill Gates’ money. See the size of space. The entire history of Earth in a timeline you can scroll through.
Each one is a tiny masterpiece of interaction design that teaches you something while entertaining you.
Why it’s worth saving: Sometimes you just need to spend ten minutes doing something delightful that has no practical purpose.
19. WikiArt: Every Artwork You’ve Never Seen#
WikiArt hosts over 250,000 artworks from thousands of artists across every movement and period. Better search and categorization than most museum websites. All free to browse.
It’s like having access to every major museum collection simultaneously without the museum guards telling you not to get too close.
Why it’s worth saving: Art history becomes a lot more interesting when you can actually see the work instead of just reading about it.
20. This Person Does Not Exist: AI-Generated Faces#
Every time you refresh, you see a new face generated entirely by AI. None of these people exist. The technology is simultaneously impressive and unsettling.
It’s not useful for anything specific, but it’s a fascinating demonstration of how far generative AI has come and a glimpse into a very strange future.
Why it’s worth saving: Sometimes you need a reminder that we’re living in a science fiction timeline. This provides that reminder.
What to Actually Do With These#
Finding cool websites is easy. Using them is harder. They get bookmarked, forgotten, and eventually deleted in a fit of organizational enthusiasm that leaves you with an empty bookmark bar and regrets.
The problem isn’t the websites. It’s how we save them.
Browser bookmarks dump everything into folders you’ll never look at again. “Read later” apps become digital graveyards. Desktop bookmarks don’t sync to mobile. Mobile bookmarks are impossible to organize.
You need a system that matches how you actually want to use these discoveries. Not a hierarchical folder structure that requires perfect discipline to maintain. Not a flat list that becomes overwhelming after ten items. Something visual and flexible that you’ll actually return to.
This is exactly why I built stashed.in the way I did. Instead of treating every link the same, you create visual collections around themes or purposes. A stash for “Design Resources” with an aesthetic header that reminds you what’s inside. A stash for “Websites That Make Me Think” that you can make public to share with others. A password-protected stash for “Work Tools” that you share with your team.
The visual headers aren’t just decoration. They’re memory aids. When you see that stash three months from now, you immediately remember what it contains and why you created it.
And because stashed.in is web-based, your collections work everywhere. Find something on your phone during lunch? Add it to a stash. Need to reference it on your laptop later? It’s already there.
The twenty websites in this article could be a single stash you share with friends or keep private for yourself. That’s the point. Discovering cool things is fun. Being able to actually use them later is what matters.
How to Build Your Own List#
These twenty are my picks, but the internet is vast and your interests are specific to you. Here’s how to build your own collection of websites worth saving:
Follow curiosity, not utility. The best websites aren’t always the most “useful” ones. Sometimes the most valuable thing is something that just makes you think differently.
Save the context. When you find something worth keeping, write a note about why it mattered. Future you will appreciate knowing what past you was thinking.
Share your discoveries. The websites you find valuable are probably valuable to others. Create public collections and contribute to the ecosystem of discovery.
Revisit periodically. Set a monthly reminder to actually look through your saved websites. Use them, delete what no longer matters, and be surprised by what you forgot you found.
Look beyond the first page. Google’s first page is heavily optimized. The weird, wonderful stuff is deeper. Use specific searches. Follow links from articles. Ask people what they use.
Why This Still Matters#
In 2025, most people’s internet experience is algorithmic feeds on five platforms. Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Reddit. Maybe Facebook if you’re over 30.
The algorithm shows you what it thinks will keep you engaged. Sometimes that’s great content. Often it’s not. But more importantly, it’s a tiny slice of what the internet actually contains.
The twenty websites in this article exist outside that algorithmic bubble. They’re created by individuals and small teams who built something because they wanted it to exist, not because they were optimizing for engagement metrics.
Finding and saving these places is an act of curation. It’s saying “I’m not letting the algorithm decide what’s worth my attention. I’m making that choice myself.”
That choice matters more than it seems. Every website you actively choose to visit instead of passively scrolling a feed is a tiny act of agency in your digital life.
Multiply that by dozens of discoveries, and you’ve built an internet experience that actually reflects your interests instead of what some recommendation engine thinks should hold your attention.
Start Building Your Collection#
You don’t need to save all twenty of these websites. Pick three that genuinely interest you. Create a stash called “Internet Gems” or “Cool Websites” or whatever makes sense to you.
Add those three. Give the stash a header image that captures the vibe. Make it private if it’s just for you, or public if you want to share your discoveries.
Then, as you browse and explore, add more. Not compulsively. Not “save everything just in case.” But when you genuinely find something worth returning to, add it to the collection.
Over time, you’ll build a curated library of the internet’s best corners. Places that expand your thinking, solve problems elegantly, or just remind you why the web can be wonderful.
The algorithm isn’t going to show you these places. You have to find them yourself. But once you do, having a good system to organize and share them makes all the difference.
These twenty websites are a starting point. Your collection will be different. That’s the entire point.
The internet is massive, weird, creative, and full of things you’ve never seen. Go find them. Save the ones that matter. Share the ones worth sharing.
Your future self will thank you for building a collection worth revisiting instead of a bookmark folder full of dead links and forgotten intentions.
Start with one stash. Add three websites. Build from there.
The coolest websites aren’t the ones everyone knows about. They’re the ones you discovered, saved, and actually use. Go build that collection.
