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About Cloudhiker

Cloudhiker sends you to random websites you would never have found

Since 2020, I am the person who curates all those Websites.

My name is Kevin. I have collected 32900 websites on Cloudhiker. Press the button and you land on one of them at random. Personal pages, obsessive archives, single-purpose oddities, things nobody would ever build for a living. No feed, no ranking, no team, no investors. Just me, a server in the EU, and far too many open tabs.

Try it now How a site gets in
Kevin Woblick, the creator and maintainer of Cloudhiker

The story

The cool sides of the Internet are still there.

The good old days of the Internet are over. Now we have feeds, algorithms and enshittification. However, the strange, personal, unprofitable part of the web kept being built by people in their evenings. It is all still out there. We all just live in Facebook and Google bubbles right now.

In 2020 I built the thing I was missing. A button that picks a website at random out of a collection of websites aside the big, mainstream commercial internet.

  1. 2020

    The first version goes online. One button, a list of websites I had collected myself, and a server far too small for what came later.

  2. 2021

    The tech press notices. Fast Company runs a piece on where people wander now that the old discovery engines are gone, and Cloudhiker is in it.

  3. 2022

    The browser extension ships. The next site becomes one click away from whatever tab you happen to be in.

  4. 2024

    The BBC writes about how random browsing shaped the way we all use the internet. The question of what to use instead keeps coming back around.

  5. 2025

    Web Wanderings starts, a newsletter for the finds that deserve more than three seconds of somebody's attention.

  6. Today

    32900 approved websites, 35045 people with an account, and the same review process as on the first day. Every submission still gets opened by a person before anybody else sees it.

How a site gets in

There is no crawler, no ranking signal and no AI model deciding what belongs here. There is a queue, and I work through it.

This is the least scalable part of Cloudhiker and the only part that makes it worth using. Every website in the collection went through these five steps.

  1. 01

    Somebody submits it

    Mostly readers, sometimes the people who built the site, often me at two in the morning. A free account is all it takes.

    Submit a site
  2. 02

    I open it and look around

    Every single one, by hand, against a written set of rules. English, works on a phone, no listicles, no thin content, nothing hostile. Quality over quantity is the whole policy.

    Read the rules
  3. 03

    It gets filed

    One of twenty categories, from Science and Gaming to Nature and Arts. Sites built with or largely about AI are flagged, so you can switch them off entirely.

  4. 04

    It joins the rotation

    From then on it has exactly the same chance of showing up as everything else. Nothing climbs the list by being popular, recent or paid for.

  5. 05

    It gets watched

    Cloudhiker checks the whole collection on a schedule. Sites that die get pulled. A twenty year old page going offline is the saddest part of this job.

  6. 9312

    Sites did not make it

    Rejected after review, plus 127 waiting in the queue right now. Saying no this often is what keeps the yes worth something.

The numbers

Websites
32900
Approved, categorised and in rotation right now.
Site Views
32.8 Million
Times somebody pressed the button and landed somewhere new.
Likes
297934
Sites people wanted to keep instead of losing again.
Accounts
35045
Free, and the only way to submit sites of your own.

Twenty categories, unevenly loved

Each block is one category, sized by how many sites it holds. Nobody planned these proportions. They are simply what people submit.

Fun Stuff
Internet, Software
Technology, Hardware
TV, Movies, Video
Science, Math
Culture, Society
Education, Learning
Home, Garden
Philosophy, Life
Health
Sports
Gaming
Literature, Writing
Arts, Design & Crafts
Music, Audio
Food, Cooking
Nature, Animals, Earth
History
Business, Economics
Other
Tap a color block to see the category.

What you can do

Pressing the button is the whole idea. Everything else exists so you can keep what you found.

Collections

Sort the good finds into lists while you explore. Keep them to yourself or make them public for everybody else.

Your collections

Likes

One tap and a site is saved to your dashboard. For the moment you close the tab and immediately regret it.

A public profile

Off by default. Turn it on and your public collections become something you can hand to a friend.

Browser extension

The next site, one click away from any tab you are in. Free, for Chrome and Chromium browsers.

Get the extension

Web Wanderings

A newsletter where I write up the best things the collection has thrown at me lately. No spam, no fluff.

Read an issue

Toplist and achievements

Submit sites and you take a seat on the toplist. Explore enough and things start unlocking. It is meant to be fun, nothing more.

See the toplist
Keeping the lights on

Servers cost money. Here is exactly who pays

Cloudhiker has to earn what it costs, and I would rather tell you how than pretend it runs on enthusiasm. Advertising is placed by hand, one slot in the navigation and one banner after a good stretch of exploring. Not every third site, not disguised as a website, and never sold to a network that profiles you.

The rest comes from Premium subscribers, who get the ads removed, a history of where they have been, the back button, and a few things built for people who explore for hours. No investors, no data sold, no plans to be acquired by anybody.

See what Premium adds Or just buy me a coffee
  • No venture capital
  • No data sold, ever
  • Ads placed by a human, rarely

Running since

2020

Team size
One, plus a community that submits and argues about categories.
Funding
Advertising, Premium subscriptions and the occasional coffee.
Exit strategy
None. This is meant to still be here in ten years.

How it is run

A one-person project, and the rules it runs on.

No algorithm, no ranking

Every approved site has exactly the same chance of reaching you. Nothing gets boosted for being popular, recent, or willing to pay.

Statistics stay on my server

Traffic numbers come from a Matomo instance I host myself. No Google Analytics, no advertising network following you around the web. The privacy policy lists every exception, and it is a short list.

AI is labelled, not hidden

Sites built with or about AI have to be flagged as such, and you can switch them off in your settings. Nothing in the collection was chosen by a model.

Free stays free

The button, the collection and an account cost nothing and always will. Premium adds comfort for the people who explore the most. It does not take anything away from everybody else.

Built in Berlin, offset in trees

One person, German servers, and the footprint of the whole thing offset through Tree Nation .

You are writing to a person

There is no support department to escalate to. Send a mail or drop into the Discord and you get me, usually within a day or two. Broken site, odd bug, or an idea, it all lands in the same inbox .

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Support the collection

Cloudhiker runs on the people who use it. A subscription pays for the curation and the servers behind every random landing, takes the ads off your screen, and unlocks a handful of things built for the people who explore the most.

No advertisement Not a single ad, anywhere on the site.
90 days Explore History Find the sites you have accidentally clicked away, and step back through them with the Back Button.*
Unlimited Collections More than 3 of them, with as many sites as you want.
Support an independent developer No investors, no tracking deals. Just the people who use it.
* History records start from the day your subscription starts.
Subscribe now

Come say hello

Tell me what you found, what broke, or which site you think everybody should see. The Discord is where most of it happens, and I read all of it myself.

Chat on Discord Join on Reddit Write me a mail
Follow on Mastodon Follow on Bluesky Follow on Tumblr

If Cloudhiker is useful to you, a review on Trustpilot or a vote on AlternativeTo helps more people find it.