Where can you browse web apps sorted by category?

The 15 categories, and what's actually in each

Fifteen categories, and all fifteen have apps in them — nothing on this list is an empty shelf waiting to be filled. Utilities is the largest at 42 apps (converters, calculators, password tools), followed closely by Development Tools and Productivity at 35 each, then Education at 29 and Design & Creative at 28.

The middle of the list is where most of the browsing actually happens: Games & Entertainment at 27, Music & Audio at 18, Video & Streaming at 14, Health & Fitness and Social & Communication at 13 each, News & Reading at 12. These aren't rounding — they're the count of listings that currently pass the same editorial bar as everything else, which is why a category with 12 apps in it is 12 apps worth opening rather than a placeholder waiting to fill up.

The smaller categories are still real: Food & Drink sits at 6 apps, Photography at 7, Shopping & Travel at 8, Finance & Business at 10 — narrow by design, because a browser-based recipe app or packing-list tool is a smaller category of software than a code editor, not a sign the directory skipped it. Browsing by category shows the full breakdown; clicking into any one of them filters the directory to just that shelf.

Free, offline, installable — three different questions

Of the 374 apps listed, 340 are free to use. 85 can be installed from the browser onto a desktop or phone — their own window, their own icon, no app store. And 9 keep working with no internet connection at all, once loaded. Those three numbers are independent of each other: a free app is not automatically installable, and an installable app is not automatically one that survives a dead connection.

That third number — 8 — is small on purpose, and it's worth saying plainly: most web apps need their connection, the same way most websites do. An app earning the offline badge has to actually keep running with the network cut, which most tools built for a browser were never designed to promise.

Every app's own page shows all three as badges, side by side — Works Offline or Online Only, Installable or Browser Only, Free or Paid — so you don't have to dig through a description to find out which of the three applies before you open the tool.

If you came here searching for a PWA directory specifically — a catalog of only the apps that install like native software — that's a narrower, adjacent thing. pwa.directory, the sibling site to this one, is built exactly for that: every entry there is judged first on installability. Here, installability is a badge on the listing, not the gate to get one — a genuinely useful web app that just runs in a tab gets listed the same as one you can pin to your dock.

Searching and filtering the catalog

The directory page takes a name or a tag — type 'pdf' and every converter surfaces, type 'chess' and Lichess comes up — and category chips narrow the list to one shelf at a time. Sort by best match, A–Z or most detailed.

The three badges are also filters: Works Offline, Installable and Free sit above the list as chips you click to narrow it, so 'every free app that works offline' is two clicks rather than a page-by-page read. The installable page is a separate, stricter view — it shows the 85 installable apps that also clear the editorial depth threshold.fline filter isn't there yet, since 8 apps is too thin a shelf to build a whole filter around.

Where the listings actually come from

A small hand-picked set anchors the catalog — apps like Excalidraw, Photopea and Lichess, chosen and written up individually. The rest arrives two ways: a weekly discovery pass that finds and checks new browser apps against the same bar (real app, HTTPS, actually works, no dark patterns), and paid fast-track submissions from makers who want their listing reviewed and published faster.

Every entry, regardless of which door it came through, has to clear the same four checks before it's public: it's a genuine app rather than a landing page for a download, it does something useful, it loads over HTTPS and actually works, and it's honest about what it offers. The full criteria are on the about page.

If you're looking for something specific

'Apps directory' and 'browse apps' are broad searches, and the honest answer to both is: yes, here's one, and here's exactly what's in it rather than a vague promise. For a narrower need — every web app for school and studying, every browser-based PDF tool, every game with no download — the category pages and the directory search get there faster than scrolling a homepage.

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