About
Four rules, and no way to pay around them.
This is a hand-kept list of 6 small web tools. It exists because searching for “free X” now returns a page of things that are free until they are useful, and “no sign up” returns a page of things that ask for an email address on the second click.
There is no way to buy a listing, and no way to buy a better position in one. Nobody is billed, so nobody is a customer, so there is nothing to sell. The list is short because it is checked, not because it is new.
What an app has to be
- Free, in full. Not free for fourteen days, not free up to three documents, not free with a watermark on the output. If there is a paid tier, the free tier has to be a tool somebody would keep using rather than a demonstration of one. A limit you discover after doing the work is a paywall wearing a different coat.
- Usable without an account. No sign-up, no email address, no “continue with” button, no login wall in front of the result. Arriving cold and getting the thing done is the test.
- Honest about where the work happens. Every listing says whether what you give it stays in your browser or is sent to somebody’s server. Both are fine. Being vague about which is not.
- Clear about what it keeps. What is stored, and for how long, in a sentence a person can read. “We may collect certain information” is not an answer to this question; it is a way of not answering it.
And what this site does
It would be a poor showing to demand those four answers of everybody else and dodge them, so: this directory is free, has no account, runs as flat pages on a server with no database behind them, and keeps nothing — no cookies, no analytics, no third-party scripts, no fonts fetched from anybody else, and no log of what you clicked. The only script on the page hides cards that do not match what you typed, and it never speaks to the network.
You do not have to take that on trust either.
The whole site is a few files you can read,
and the list you are browsing is one PHP array in lib/Apps.php.
What it is not
It is not comprehensive, and it is not trying to be. There is no ranking, no star rating, no review count and no algorithm — the order is a judgement, made by hand, about which one a visitor is most likely to want first. It is 6 entries in 5 categories, and it will grow slowly, because every entry has been used.
Suggest one
There is no form here, because a form needs somewhere to write to and this site deliberately has nowhere. Open an issue instead, and say:
- Where it is, and what it does in one line.
- Whether you have used it, and what for.
- Which of the four rules you are least sure it meets — that is the useful part, and the part a submission almost never includes.
Your own tool is welcome. Say that it is yours; it costs a suggestion nothing and hiding it costs it everything.
Something here is wrong
An app that has quietly added a login wall, started watermarking its output, or changed what it keeps is the single most useful thing anyone can report, and the thing a hand-kept list is worst at noticing on its own. Report it and the entry comes down. Corrected, not footnoted — the four answers are the only thing this directory asks to be believed about.