Every square on Square Town (square.pov.town) is free — $0, no card, a URL and an email address — and every square is 1×1: no sizes, no blocks, no tiers and no subscription. One domain, one favicon, one cell. The dollar still exists; it has just moved. It is the minimum it costs to evict someone: taking a square costs double what its owner paid, and a free square was paid for with nothing, so the floor is $1. The entry is free so that claiming is an impulse rather than a decision, and the size is fixed at 1×1 so that nobody has to design anything: your favicon already exists, and it is already square. The game comes from where you are and who evicts you, not from how big you are.
TL;DR — A square is free, forever (unless someone pays $1 to evict you). Evictions cost 2× what the owner paid, $1 minimum: free → $1 → $2 → $4. No sizes: a favicon is a favicon. No uploads: Square Town fetches your icon from your URL. No accounts, no renewals; an email for your deed and eviction warnings. The only other prices on the site are the Throne ($100 intro, doubles per eviction) and an optional $5 one-time analytics unlock on your deed. Compare: the Million Dollar Homepage's minimum was $100, SaaSBoard's bigger blocks are $10/tile/month, Pixel Spotlight rents a block for £500 a year.
The whole price list
| Thing | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| One square (1×1) | Free | Any empty cell in the live area; you click it, paste a URL and an email |
| Evicting a square | 2× what the current owner paid, $1 minimum | free → $1 → $2 → $4 → $8 … by card via Stripe |
| The Throne (4×4 centre) | $100 intro, doubles per eviction | One owner; the only non-1×1 tile |
| Per-day analytics on your deed | $5, one-time | Optional; totals are free |
| Kissing an icon | Free | Anyone, any icon, public |
| Choosing your coordinates | Free | The "pick fee" is $0 |
That's the pricing page in a table. Everything else on Square Town is a mechanic, not a charge.
Why the square is free and the dollar is the floor
Free is below the threshold where people compare. At $0 nobody opens a spreadsheet, asks their co-founder, or wonders about the return. Square Town wants the first decision to be "which cell?" not "is this worth it?". The only thing standing between you and a square is an email address — which is where your deed goes, and where the warning lands if someone takes your spot.
A dollar makes doubling work. Evictions on Square Town cost double the current owner's price. Doubling zero is zero, so there has to be a floor, and $1 is it. That gives a clean ladder — $1, $2, $4, $8, $16 — where each step is a real decision but the first few are still impulse-sized. Put the floor at $10 and the third eviction is $40, which ends most wars before they're fun. Put it at $0.10 and the first ten evictions are noise. $1 puts the interesting part of the curve (roughly $4–$32) exactly where an indie hacker will fight over a good spot and a bystander will watch. See the economics of eviction.
A dollar is easy to say. "1 square = free. Forever.*" is the tagline. The asterisk (until someone evicts you, for $1) is the whole rulebook. A price list you can say in one breath is a price list people repeat.
Free makes the wall about the wall. If Square Town sold bigger blocks, revenue would come from selling size, and the incentive would be to make big blocks look great and small ones look sad. Squares cost nothing, so the only money Square Town sees comes from evictions and the Throne — that is, from people wanting a spot somebody else already has. The incentives point at making the wall itself worth visiting — live feed, 3D towers, kisses, rings — because a wall nobody visits is a wall nobody fights over.
Why there are no sizes
Almost every pixel wall since 2005 has sold blocks: 10×10 minimum on the Million Dollar Homepage, drag-to-select rectangles on its clones, tiered "featured" sizes on logo boards. Square Town has one size, and it's the smallest one. Four reasons.
- No size decision. The moment a wall offers sizes, claiming becomes shopping. Should I get 2×2? Is 5×5 worth it? What if a competitor buys bigger? Square Town deletes the question. Everyone is 1×1; the only variable is location.
- No design work. A 10×10 block needs an image made for it. A 1×1 square holds a favicon, which your site already has and which is already square. Square Town fetches it from your URL through Google's favicon service. If you don't have one you get a clown (see the Hall of Clowns) — that's the only "design" step, and it's one the rest of the web wanted you to do anyway. Why favicons beat pixels goes deeper.
- One domain, one square. Because a square shows a favicon and a favicon belongs to a domain, the natural unit is one cell per site. There's nothing to gain from a 3×3 of the same icon except a bigger version of the same icon. Big brands don't get to be louder by paying more — except at the Throne, on purpose.
- Legibility. Every icon in town is the same size, so the wall reads as a wall of sites, not as a few billboards and a lot of noise. Zoom in and every cell is a recognisable logo. In 3D, the towers differ in height (height = clicks + kisses) — earned, not bought.
The Throne is the one exception: a 4×4 gold tile in the exact centre with its own doubling price. It exists precisely because Square Town wanted one place where "pay more to be bigger" applies, so that it applies nowhere else. Read The Throne, explained.
Where the game comes from instead
If size is fixed and the entry is free, what's left to want? Location, and keeping it.
- Location. You click any empty cell in the live area. Only the central 16×16 is live at launch; each time it's 75 % full it grows by 4 cells in every direction, up to 1024×1024. Cells near the Throne, near famous icons, or next to your own other projects are worth more to people — not in dollars, in wanting.
- Evictions. Any square can be taken for double its price, $1 minimum. Wanting expresses itself as money only when someone else wants your spot. Quiet squares stay free forever; contested ones climb, publicly, in the live feed.
- Kisses. Anyone can kiss any icon for free; kisses are public and counted, and each one adds a storey to the icon's tower. It costs nothing to be loved in town; it costs attention.
- Towers. Click count is height. The wall rewards sites people actually click, not sites that bought the biggest block.
None of that needs a price list. That's the point.
How free compares to what everyone else charges
Prices below are from our August 2026 snapshot; each site's model is different enough that the comparison is about shape, not just amount.
| Site | Smallest thing you can buy | Model | What Square Town does differently |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Million Dollar Homepage (2005) | 10×10 pixel block, $100 | $1/pixel, one-time, image upload; sold out in 5 months | A whole square for free, no upload, still open, evictable for $1+ |
| SaaSBoard | 1×1 tile free; bigger blocks $10/tile/month or $100/tile/year | Subscription for size; uploaded logo on a 100×100 grid | One size, free, favicon fetched, no renewal, evictions |
| Pixel Spotlight | £500 per block for 12 months | Rented logo/message block, promoted with paid ads; expires | Free forever* vs £500 a year |
| Link for a Dollar | $1 per square ($4 for 2×2, $10 for 10, $25 for 5×5) | Permanent grid, logo or initials, tiered sizes | Free entry (their $1 is our eviction floor), no sizes, evictions/kisses/Throne |
| 3MPixel | 10×10 pixels, $10 minimum | $0.10/pixel, image upload, resale marketplace | No minimum at all, nothing to upload |
| TopWorldStartups | 10×10 pixels, $100 | $1/pixel blocks up to 100×100 = $10,000 | Free flat |
SaaSBoard's free 1×1 is the closest thing to Square Town's entry price, and it lets you upload a logo and description; the trade is a subscription if you want to be bigger, and no eviction, throne or 3D. Pixel Spotlight is a different product for a different budget — a promoted, expiring block. The Million Dollar Homepage's $100 minimum made sense when 1,000,000 pixels had to sell in a hurry; twenty-one years on, Square Town's bet is that a free favicon square is what an indie site actually wants. And 2026 has produced a wave of $1-a-square walls (Million Squares Project, Own the Void, Project Pixel, myPixelit and others), so a dollar at the door is no longer rare — which is exactly why Square Town moved the dollar to the floor and is selling its game loop, not its price. Full comparisons: Square Town vs SaaSBoard, Square Town vs the Million Dollar Homepage.
What free doesn't buy
Being honest about this is part of why the entry can be free:
- No traffic guarantee. Views and clicks are counted on your deed; how many you get depends on the town's traffic and your icon.
- No SEO. Clicks are 302 redirects through
/go/:id; the wall is a WebGL canvas. There is no link equity to sell, so Square Town doesn't sell it. - No permanence against evictions. "Forever" means no expiry and no renewal — until someone pays $1 (or double what you paid, whichever is more).
- No account. Your secret deed URL is the only proof of ownership. Have it mailed to you or bookmark it; lose both and it's gone.
The manifesto says the rest.
FAQ
How much does a square cost on Square Town?
Nothing. A 1×1 square anywhere in the live area is free: paste a URL and an email address. There are no sizes and no subscriptions. Money enters only when someone evicts you ($1 minimum, doubling after that). The only other prices are the Throne ($100 intro, doubling per eviction) and an optional $5 analytics unlock.
Can I claim a bigger block?
No. Every square is 1×1 and shows one favicon. The Throne (4×4, centre) is the single exception and has its own price. Nothing else can be enlarged, and there's nothing to upload that would need the space.
Why doesn't Square Town let me upload a logo?
Because your favicon already exists and is already square. Square Town fetches it from your URL via Google's favicon service, which is why a square can be free and takes a minute. Sites without a favicon get a clown until they add one.
Is free really forever?
There is no expiry and no renewal. You keep the square until someone evicts you by paying double what you paid — $1 for a square you claimed for free.
So where does the $1 come in?
It's the eviction floor. Evicting costs double the owner's price, and double nothing is nothing, so the first eviction of any free square is $1. After that: $2, $4, $8.
How does this compare to the Million Dollar Homepage?
The Million Dollar Homepage charged $1 per pixel with a 10×10 minimum, so the cheapest purchase was $100 and needed an image. Square Town gives you a whole square for free and needs only a URL and an email.
Are there discounts or coupons?
No. The claim dialog jokes about "list price" and a daily discount, but every square arrives at $0 for everyone, every day.