Collection
No sign-up, no email
Free, immediately usable and not interested in your email address. A shrinking category, which is why it gets its own page.
1,269 sites · page 26 of 27
Software-defined radio receivers around the world you can tune through a browser, listening to shortwave through somebody else's aerial.
- 10 min
- Sound on
- Desktop
The long-running forum where amateur investigators pick apart cold cases, for better and occasionally much worse.
Genuinely baffling real product listings pulled from the big marketplaces and presented with almost no commentary.
- 2 min
The account that rates every dog above ten out of ten and has defended that scale in public for over a decade.
The planet chopped into three-metre squares, each given a three-word name, which is either brilliant or a licensing trap depending who you ask.
- <1 min
The space station's position, ground track and next passes over you, with an orbital countdown that is oddly hard to stop watching.
Two portraits side by side, one photographed and one generated. A University of Washington project, and your score keeps falling.
A relationship graph of everybody famous, cross-referenced far past the point of reason and updated constantly.
Which record a sample came from, who covered whom and where that drum break originally lived, with the two tracks played side by side.
- 1 hr+
- Sound on
Search engine for hand-made pages in the spirit of the early web, with a surprise-me button that behaves exactly like 1998.
- <1 min
Instructions for very nearly anything, illustrated in that unmistakable cartoon style. The artwork alone justifies the visit.
A vast library of freely licensed photos, maps, diagrams and sound files, each with its licence spelled out. The picture shelf behind Wikipedia.
- 1 hr+
One click, one random Wikipedia article, repeated until the afternoon has quietly gone somewhere else.
- <1 min
Wikipedia's own catalogue of the pettiest disputes in its history, including years of war over a hyphen.
- 10 min
The editors' own curated list of the encyclopedia's strangest entries, and the best rabbit hole entrance there is.
- <1 min
The free library of source texts — treaties, speeches and out-of-copyright novels, transcribed and proofread by hand.
- 10 min
Wikipedia articles served as a vertical swipe feed, which is either a public service or the end of civilisation.
Drag Wikipedia cards onto a timeline in the right order. Three lives, and you will lose one to the invention of the fork.
- 10 min
Wikipedia with a readable layout, a proper contents sidebar and images that stop fighting the text.
- <1 min
A dictionary of every word in every language, including etymologies, declension tables and regional slang.
- <1 min
Live safari drives broadcast twice a day from South African reserves, with guides answering viewer questions over the radio as they go.
- 1 hr+
- Sound on
A dilemma, a tempting benefit, a horrible catch, and the percentage of everybody else who pressed it regardless.
Roughly a hundred thousand Winamp skins, all loadable in the browser. An enormous accidental record of amateur graphic design.
- 1 hr+
- Desktop
A parody desktop that gets progressively stranger the more of its programs you open. Start with the solitaire and keep going.
An operating system that never existed, built in a browser, with its own applications and a genuine sense of its own history.
A working Windows XP desktop in a tab, with Minesweeper, Paint and the startup sound, for pure muscle memory.
- 10 min
- Sound on
- Desktop
Ten minutes out of somebody else's window somewhere in the world, filmed by them and left quietly running.
- 2 min
- Sound on
The forecast as an animated map, with wind, waves, temperature and a dozen models to argue between, free and without an account.
- <1 min
Answers computed rather than retrieved: integrals, unit conversions, orbital mechanics and the nutritional content of a Mars bar.
Thousands of interactive maths and science notebooks contributed over two decades, each one a single slider-driven idea.
- 10 min
- Desktop
Victorian engravings cut apart and given modern dialogue, producing jokes no other format could quite deliver.
Crazy golf on a floating landscape that unfolds into a new course between shots. Worth playing for the transitions alone.
- 10 min
- Desktop
Six goes at one five-letter word, the same word for everybody, once a day. The puzzle that spawned an entire genre in three months.
- 2 min
Renders your text in every font installed on the machine at once, which is the fastest way ever devised to pick one.
- <1 min
- Desktop
A dictionary showing real usage, related words and examples pulled from the wild rather than agreed by committee.
- <1 min
Readings from thousands of air monitoring stations worldwide on one map, colour-coded from a calm green to a genuinely alarming maroon.
- <1 min
Free indicators for every country going back decades, with charts, maps and bulk downloads on each series.
- 10 min
Plain map and flag quizzes covering every continent, aimed at classrooms and quietly excellent for adults as well.
- 10 min
Over a hundred solitaire variants with proper undo, statistics and card backs from 2007. Still the most complete one going.
- 10 min
The free, open-source answer to GeoGuessr, with unlimited rounds, a daily challenge and multiplayer that costs nothing.
- 10 min
Guess the country from its silhouette alone, with each miss handing you the distance and compass bearing to the real answer.
- 2 min
Live counters for population, emissions, water use and books published, ticking faster than is entirely comfortable.
- <1 min
A browser planetarium stitched from real survey data, letting you pan the whole sky in visible light, infrared or radio.
- 10 min
- Desktop
Drag a hundred colour chips into one perfect gradient. The score tells you how good your colour vision actually is.
- 10 min
- Desktop
Real-time fractal zoomer ported to the browser, smooth enough that the boundary keeps unfolding as fast as you dive.
- 10 min
- Desktop
Recordings of very nearly every bird call on earth, uploaded by amateurs and searchable by species, country and even call type.
- 10 min
- Sound on
One expanding circle to breathe along with, adjustable to box breathing or 4-7-8, and nothing else on the page.
Stick figures on romance, sarcasm, maths and language, with a second joke in the alt text of every single strip.
How we picked these
Every entry in Detour is hand-sorted rather than scraped: filed under one category, given one to three moods, and placed in a time band for how quickly it pays off. The practical facts — cost, sign-up, sound, device and whether it is safe at a desk — are recorded per site and shown on every card, so you can rule things out before you click.
No sign-up, no email: questions
How many sites are in “No sign-up, no email”?
1,269 sites, each hand-sorted by category, mood and how long it takes to pay off. 18 of them are AltF originals that run right here.
Which of these sites are free with no sign-up?
1,269 of the 1,269 are free and need no account. None of them are paid.
Do these sites work on a phone, and are they safe for work?
819 of 1,269 work on a phone; the rest are desktop only. 1,263 are safe for work and 1,136 work with the sound off.