Useful websites worth bookmarking

The internet is still good at being useful, which is easy to forget when the loudest parts of it are trying to sell us something, scare us, or make us watch one more short video before we go do anything else.

I asked ChatGPT to help pull together a list of useful websites from the kind of Reddit threads where people share the obscure tools, archives, references, and odd little utilities they still keep bookmarked. The result was a long list, and like most AI-generated lists, it needed a human pass. Some links were obvious. Some were too commercial. Some were not the sort of thing I would point people toward from my own site.

But the larger point survived the cleanup: the web is still full of places that reward curiosity.

Here is a more organized version of that list, with sites that are useful for research, teaching, writing, coding, tinkering, traveling, or simply wandering around when the internet starts to feel too small.

Search and Research

  • Google Scholar
    Academic search without having to start from a general web search.
  • Semantic Scholar
    A research tool that can help surface papers, authors, citations, and related work.
  • Wolfram Alpha
    A computational answer engine that remains one of the stranger and more impressive corners of the web.
  • Library of Congress
    A massive historical and cultural archive.
  • Project Gutenberg
    Free public-domain books in a format that still feels refreshingly direct.
  • Internet Archive
    Books, old software, music, video, web pages, and the broader memory of the internet.
  • Open Library
    An ambitious attempt to build a web page for every book.
  • WorldCat
    A global catalog for finding books and library holdings.
  • JSTOR Open Content
    Free access to selected academic books, journals, and primary sources.
  • DOAJ
    A directory of open access journals.

Learning and Education

  • MIT OpenCourseWare
    Course materials from MIT, open to anyone.
  • Khan Academy
    Lessons and practice exercises across a wide range of subjects.
  • Coursera
    Online courses from universities and companies.
  • edX
    Another major platform for university-backed online learning.
  • OpenStax
    Free textbooks that are especially useful for students trying to keep costs down.
  • Saylor Academy
    Free and low-cost online courses.
  • freeCodeCamp
    Programming practice, projects, and certifications.
  • Exercism
    Code practice with mentoring and a useful language-by-language structure.
  • FutureLearn
    Online courses with a broad mix of academic and professional topics.
  • Alison
    Free online courses and training modules.

Programming and Technology

  • MDN Web Docs
    Still the first place I check for web platform documentation.
  • Stack Overflow
    Messy, useful, occasionally humbling, and still part of how programming gets done.
  • GitHub
    Code hosting, project discovery, issue tracking, and the public notebook of modern software.
  • GitLab
    A capable alternative for hosting and managing software projects.
  • DevDocs
    Fast documentation lookup in one place.
  • Can I Use
    Browser support tables for web features.
  • Roadmap.sh
    Learning paths for developers who want a map before they start wandering.
  • OverAPI
    Cheat sheets for programming languages and tools.
  • Regex101
    A regular expression tester that explains what your pattern is doing.
  • CodePen
    A good place to test and share front-end experiments.

AI and Productivity

  • OpenAI
    The source for ChatGPT and OpenAI’s developer tools.
  • Claude
    Anthropic’s AI assistant.
  • Perplexity
    Search-style AI answers with source links.
  • NotebookLM
    A useful tool for working with your own source material.
  • Hugging Face
    Models, datasets, demos, and a large machine learning community.
  • Poe
    A place to try multiple AI models from one interface.
  • Gamma
    AI-assisted presentations and documents.
  • Napkin AI
    Turns text into diagrams and visual explanations.

PDFs and Documents

  • Sejda
    Browser-based PDF editing and conversion tools.
  • iLovePDF
    A straightforward collection of PDF tools.
  • Smallpdf
    PDF compression, conversion, and editing.
  • PDF24 Tools
    A large set of free PDF utilities.
  • DocHub
    PDF signing, annotation, and form filling.
  • TinyWow
    File tools for PDFs, images, video, and more.
  • CloudConvert
    Converts files between many formats.
  • Zamzar
    Another long-running file conversion service.

Audio, Video and Media

  • Vocal Remover
    Separate vocals and instrumentals from a song.
  • Audacity
    A free audio editor that has been useful forever.
  • Photopea
    A surprisingly capable image editor that runs in the browser.
  • Pixlr
    Browser-based image editing.
  • Canva
    Design templates and quick visual production.
  • Kapwing
    Online video editing and social media video tools.
  • Remove.bg
    Background removal for images.
  • Unscreen
    Background removal for video clips.
  • Pexels
    Free stock photography and video.
  • Pixabay
    Free images, video, music, and sound effects.

Writing and Language

  • LanguageTool
    Grammar and style checking with support for multiple languages.
  • DeepL
    Translation that often reads better than the older machine translation tools.
  • WordHippo
    Synonyms, rhymes, definitions, translations, and word forms.
  • OneLook
    Dictionary and reverse dictionary search.
  • Thesaurus.com
    The old standby when the word is almost right but not quite.
  • Reverso Context
    Translation examples in context.
  • Hemingway Editor
    A blunt readability checker.

Maps, Geography and History

Data and Statistics

  • FRED
    Economic data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
  • Data.gov
    The U.S. government’s open data portal.
  • Census Bureau Data
    Demographic and economic data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
  • Gapminder
    Data visualizations that help explain global development.
  • Kaggle
    Datasets, notebooks, and machine learning competitions.

Personal Finance and Shopping

Health and Science

  • PubMed
    Biomedical and life sciences research.
  • Cochrane Library
    Systematic reviews and evidence summaries.
  • Mayo Clinic
    Plain-language health information.
  • MedlinePlus
    Health information from the National Library of Medicine.
  • Examine.com
    Evidence summaries for nutrition and supplements.
  • NIH
    Research and health information from the National Institutes of Health.

Travel

  • Rome2Rio
    Compare routes across planes, trains, buses, ferries, and cars.
  • Seat61
    Train travel advice with a level of detail that feels almost heroic.
  • Atlas Obscura
    Hidden places, strange landmarks, and offbeat history.
  • Wikivoyage
    A free travel guide written in wiki form.
  • Numbeo
    Cost of living and quality-of-life comparisons.
  • FlightAware
    Flight tracking and aviation information.
  • SkyVector
    Aeronautical charts and flight planning tools.

Teaching and Instruction

Geeky Hidden Gems

If I had to start with only a dozen, I would pick Internet Archive, Our World in Data, FRED, Atlas Obscura, Wayback Machine, DevDocs, Roadmap.sh, OpenStax, LibreTexts, NotebookLM, Radio Garden, and Old Maps Online.

The useful web is not gone. It is just buried under the louder web.

Written on June 8, 2026