These lists encompass true wonders of the web, sites that defy expectations, sites you wouldn’t expect to find providing the value that they do. And all of these websites are still running, so far, in 2026.
The Seven Wonders of the Web
- Archive.org – Archive anything, anything archived
- Bitcoin.org – Democratized money
- BitTorrent.org – Democratized cloud storage
- Gutenberg – Free books
- Librivox.org – Free audiobooks
- Wikipedia.org – Free knowledge
- Reddit.com – Massive open conversations platform
The Seven Wonders of the Modern Web
(2018..Present)
- OpenStreetMap.org – Free, crowdsourced maps
- OpenWeatherMap.org – Free weather
- GitHub.com – Collaborative code hosting and open-source development
- KhanAcademy.org – Free online education
- Proton.me – Gold standard end-to-end encrypted email, vpn, cloud storage, pasword vault, and other online apps
- X.com – The world’s group chat
- Discord.com – Internet relay chat reborn
The Seven Wonders of the Peak Web
Web 2.0 (2004..2017)
- YouTube.com – Videos
- Flickr.com – Photo sharing and communities
- WordPress.com – Blogging and content management
- MySpace.com – Social networking
- Digg.com – Social news aggregation
- Reddit.com – Community-driven forums
- GoogleMaps.com – Interactive mapping
The Seven Wonders of the Old Web
Web 1.0 (1991..2004)
- Usenet
- IRC Internet Relay Chat
- Mosaic Browser (Wikipedia)- The first popular, widely used web browser
- The World Wide Web (CERN info.cern.ch) – The first website
- Slashdot.org – Early tech news and community site
- Craigslist.org – Online classifieds
- Hotmail.com – One the original email providers
Honourable mentions:
- Geocities.com – Free website hosting
- Hotmail.com – Free email
- Yahoo – Search engine
- MapQuest – The original popular online maps you had to print out
The Seven Wonders of the Commercial Web
- Amazon.com – Online retail
- eBay.com – Online auction
- PayPal – Online payments
- AliExpress.com – The sketchy Chinese marketplace that has all the cool stuff
The Seven Wonders of the Free Web
- GitLab.com – Code hosting
- PortableApps.com – Easy, no hassle package manager for popular free and open source apps
- Mozilla.org – Free web browser
- Thunderbird.net – Free email and productivity app
- StackExchange – Q&A perfected
- WikiMedia Commons – Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to everyone, in their own language.
- CreativeCommons.org – Simple, clear, accessible licenses, terms, privacy docs, etc.
The Seven Wonders of the Secure Web
- Session.org – Free, decentralized, end-to-end encrypted messaging
- Brave Search – The only remaining major independent search engine
- uBlock Origin – The web is a futuristic utopia without ads
The Seven Wonders of the Weird Web
- 4chan.org – Anonymous imageboard
- BabylonBee.com – The satirical news website that helped return freedom to X/Twitter, the last major free speech platform
- LibraryOfBabel.info – Search for the book that contains anything you can think of
- MillionDollarHomepage.com – People paid to advertise in little blocks of pixels