40 websites to explore the world from your couch
Travel from your couch. You can walk through Tokyo, drive through Lisbon with the local radio on, look out of a stranger's window or fly over any city in 3D.
Updated · 40 sites · hand-checked
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1. Google Earth
The whole planet in 3D in a browser tab. Fly through cities, take the guided Voyager stories or measure anything.
- Maps & Earth
- Free
- earth.google.com
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2. Radio Garden
Spin a globe and listen to live local radio from anywhere on earth. The best map on the internet.
- Music & Audio
- Free
- radio.garden
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3. WindowSwap
Ten minutes out of a stranger's window, somewhere in the world. Uploaded by whoever lives there, with the birds and the traffic left in.
- Fun & Weird
- Freemium
- window-swap.com
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4. Drive & Listen
Ride along a real dashcam drive through a city of your choice while its local radio stations play.
- Music & Audio
- Free
- driveandlisten.app
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5. City Walks
Long walking videos through cities, beaches and night streets, with the street sound left in. Pick a city and wander.
- Maps & Earth
- Free
- citywalks.live
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6. Virtual Vacation
Pick a city and walk, drive or fly through it in first-person video, or drop into a live street feed.
- Maps & Earth
- Free
- virtualvacation.us
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7. F4map
OpenStreetMap rendered as a 3D city with buildings, trees and moving shadows. Fly anywhere in the world.
- Maps & Earth
- Free
- demo.f4map.com
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8. The True Size Of
Drag countries across the Mercator projection and watch Greenland shrink to its actual size.
- Maps & Earth
- Free
- thetruesize.com
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9. Atlas Obscura
A gazetteer of the world’s overlooked places — a stairwell to nowhere, a museum of soil, a town built inside a rock. Browsable as a map or as very good writing.
- Read & Archive
- Free
- atlasobscura.com
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10. OpenGuessr
Dropped somewhere on Street View, guess where you are. A free GeoGuessr with unlimited rounds and multiplayer.
- Games & Play
- Free
- openguessr.com
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11. Nullschool Earth
A live globe of wind, ocean currents, waves and particulates, animated straight from forecast data. Spin it, switch the layer, and watch the weather move.
- Maps & Earth
- Open source
- earth.nullschool.net
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12. Mount Everest 3D
Fly around a high-resolution 3D model of Everest and trace every climbing route and trekking path to the summit.
- Maps & Earth
- Free
- mount-everest3d.com
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13. Chronotrains
Pick any European station and watch the map bloom outwards, shaded by how far you can get by train in one to five hours. Ruinous for an afternoon of work.
- Maps & Earth
- Free
- chronotrains.com
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14. Old Maps Online
Search historical maps by place and date across hundreds of library collections at once.
- Maps & Earth
- Free
- oldmapsonline.org
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15. TasteAtlas
A world map of traditional dishes. Zoom into any region to see what's eaten there and the places that do it best.
- Maps & Earth
- Free
- tasteatlas.com
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16. Stellarium Web
A planetarium in your browser showing the sky above your exact location, right now.
- Maps & Earth
- Open source
- stellarium-web.org
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17. ARGOS Atlas
A globe stuffed with live traffic cameras and webcams, plus flights and ships moving in real time. Spin it anywhere and look through someone's lens.
- Maps & Earth
- Free
- argosatlas.com
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18. CADMAPPER
Select any area in the world and download its buildings, roads and terrain as CAD files for architecture models.
- Maps & Earth
- Freemium
- cadmapper.com
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19. Chronas
Drag a slider through 5,000 years of history and watch empires grow and collapse on the map, with linked articles for every era.
- Maps & Earth
- Free
- chronas.org
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20. Magnitudle
Daily estimation games: guess how big, how far or how many, and see how close your gut feeling gets to the real number.
- Games & Play
- Free
- magnitudle.com
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21. Make My Drive Fun
Enter a start and end point and get the odd roadside attractions, viewpoints and detours worth stopping for along the way.
- Maps & Earth
- Free
- makemydrivefun.com
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22. MapChart
Colour in countries, states or counties and add a legend to make your own map chart in a couple of minutes.
- Maps & Earth
- Free
- mapchart.net
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23. OpenGridWorks
An interactive map of the power grid: every plant by fuel type, plus transmission lines and substations.
- Maps & Earth
- Free
- opengridworks.com
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24. Roadtrippers
Plan a road trip on a map and see the attractions, viewpoints and quirky stops worth detouring for along the route.
- Maps & Earth
- Freemium
- roadtrippers.com
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25. ShadeMap
Every mountain, building and tree shadow on earth, simulated for any date and time. Find the sunny café terrace or the shady campsite.
- Maps & Earth
- Freemium
- shademap.app
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26. Stowaway
Look up and see what's actually overhead: planes, satellites and stars drawn in 3D exactly where they are in your sky right now.
- Maps & Earth
- Free
- stowaway.live
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27. TopoExport
Draw a box on the map and download that terrain as a 3D model or contour lines, ready for 3D printing or CAD.
- Maps & Earth
- Freemium
- app.topoexport.com
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28. World Monitor
Ships, jets, air-raid sirens, undersea cables and markets layered on one live map of the world's raw signals.
- Maps & Earth
- Free
- worldmonitor.app
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29. Your Name in Landsat
Type any word and NASA spells it out with real Landsat satellite photos of rivers, islands and deserts that happen to look like letters.
- Maps & Earth
- Free
- science.nasa.gov
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30. Famelack
Live TV channels, radio and webcams from around the world, browsable by country. Formerly TV Garden. No account, no ads.
- Music & Audio
- Free
- famelack.com
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32. Mult.dev
Animate a travel route on a map, plane or car following the line, and export it as a video for your stories.
- Maps & Earth
- Freemium
- mult.dev
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33. Terraink
Make minimalist map posters of any city, styled to taste and exported print-ready as PNG, PDF or SVG.
- Maps & Earth
- Free
- terraink.app
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34. WiFi Map
Over a hundred million crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspots and passwords on a map, handy when abroad.
- Maps & Earth
- Freemium
- wifimap.io
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35. WiFi Space
A world map of Wi-Fi hotspots with their passwords, shared by travellers.
- Maps & Earth
- Free
- wifispc.com
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36. Drive From Home
Pick a city and ride along on a real drive through its streets while local FM radio plays. Armchair travel through a thousand cities.
- Maps & Earth
- Free
- drivefromhome.com
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37. McBroken
A live map of which McDonald's ice cream machines are broken right now, found by a bot that keeps trying to order a McFlurry everywhere.
- Maps & Earth
- Free
- mcbroken.com
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38. Sporcle
Timed quizzes on everything, from naming every country to every Best Picture winner, mostly made by players. One more quiz is always there.
- Games & Play
- Freemium
- sporcle.com
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39. Reactor Atlas
Every nuclear reactor on earth on one map: what type it is, when it came online, how much power it makes, and which ones were shut down and why.
- Maps & Earth
- Free
- reactoratlas.com
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40. Submarine Cable Map
Every fibre-optic cable on the ocean floor, drawn on one map with its landing points, owners and dates. The physical internet, suddenly legible.
- Maps & Earth
- Free
- submarinecablemap.com
Want more than 40?
This list is one slice of a directory of 478 websites. Search, filter by category or tag, or shuffle the lot.
Explore the full directoryQuestions
How can I virtually travel for free?
City Walks and Virtual Vacation have walking tours, Drive & Listen has drives with local radio, and Google Earth lets you fly anywhere in 3D.
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