The Million Dollar Homepage (milliondollarhomepage.com) is the 2005 original: a 1,000×1,000-pixel page that sold pixels at $1 each in 10×10 blocks ($100 minimum), sold out in five months for $1.04 million, and has been frozen ever since. Square Town (square.pov.town) is a favicon wall: a 1×1 square on a live 3D grid is free to claim, and anyone can evict you for double what you paid, $1 minimum. The difference is a finished monument versus a wall that is still being played.
At a glance
| The Million Dollar Homepage | Square Town | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $1 per pixel, sold in 10×10 blocks — $100 minimum | Free (evict for $1+); every square is 1×1 |
| What you place | Uploaded image + link + tooltip | Your site's favicon (fetched from the URL) + link |
| How you pick a spot | Chose a free block at purchase time (2005) | Click any empty cell in the live area |
| Ownership model | Permanent; the page has been static since it sold out | Own it until someone pays double what you paid |
| Can you lose your spot? | No — nothing changes; but your link can die (about 40 % have) | Yes — eviction at 2× your price, $1 minimum |
| Game mechanics | None; the last 1,000 pixels were auctioned for $38,100 | Evictions, one Throne ($100 intro, doubles), free public kisses, rings unlock at 75 % fill, Hall of Clowns |
| Live? | No | Yes — WebSockets push every claim, eviction, kiss, unlock |
| 3D? | No | Yes — favicons are towers, height = clicks + kisses |
| Analytics | None | Views, clicks, kisses per deed; $5 one-time for per-day charts |
| Accounts | n/a | None — an email address for the deed and eviction warnings; a secret deed URL is the only proof |
| Payment | n/a — sold out | None to claim; Stripe (card) for evictions, the Throne and analytics |
| Audience | 2005 web: casinos, hosts, novelty sites, and everyone who wanted to be on it | Indie hackers, side projects, anyone with a URL and an email address |
| Launched | 2005 | August 2026 |
| Status (Aug 2026) | Sold out; frozen archive with roughly 40 % dead links | Active; central 16×16 live, grows to 1,048,576 squares |
What The Million Dollar Homepage does well
It is the original, and it finished. Alex Tew's page sold 1,000,000 pixels in five months for $1.04 million, and the last 1,000 pixels went at auction for $38,100. No clone has repeated that, and hundreds have tried — our landscape counts about 120 dead or dormant ones. Being on the MDH is being in a museum; nothing built after it can offer that.
Permanence in the strict sense. Nothing has been added, moved or removed since it sold out. If your block is on the page, it will be on the page. Square Town's "forever*" comes with an asterisk: no expiry, but you can be evicted for double what you paid, $1 minimum.
Big images. A 10×10 block is 100 pixels of your own artwork; the page is a collage of logos, banners and jokes. Square Town is a grid of 16-pixel favicons. It looks like a wall of app icons, not a billboard.
A story everyone already knows. "Million Dollar Homepage" is the mental model for the whole category. When you explain Square Town, you say "like the Million Dollar Homepage, but…". That is a compliment to the MDH.
What Square Town does differently
Free, not $100. The MDH minimum was a 10×10 block for $100. Square Town's minimum is one square for nothing — a URL and an email address — and there is no larger size to buy. Ten squares is still $0, and they do not have to be adjacent. Money only appears when someone evicts you: $1 for a free square, then $2, $4, $8.
Favicon from a URL, no upload. Paste a URL and Square Town fetches the favicon via Google's favicon service. There is no image to design, host or resize. Sites without a favicon get a clown emoji until they fix it — the Hall of Clowns is public.
Things can happen to your square. Anyone can evict any square by paying double its last price, $1 minimum (free → $1 → $2 → $4…). The Throne — the 4×4 dead centre — starts at $100 and doubles with every eviction. Anyone can kiss any icon (free, public, counted), and each kiss adds a storey to its tower. The MDH has no rules after purchase, which is exactly why it is a monument and not a game. See The economics of eviction: what doubling prices actually do.
The wall never looks empty. Only the central 16×16 is live at launch; each time the live area is 75 % full it grows by 4 cells in every direction, up to 1024×1024. Locked area is not shown. The MDH launched as one million blank pixels and filled from there.
Live and 3D. Every claim, eviction, kiss and unlock is pushed to every open browser over WebSockets. Ctrl+drag tilts the wall into 3D, where each favicon is a tower whose height is its clicks plus kisses. The MDH is a static image map.
Analytics. After claiming you get a secret deed URL showing the square's views, clicks and kisses; $5 one-time unlocks per-day charts. On the MDH you never learned whether anyone clicked.
Dead links are visible. The MDH is roughly 40 % dead links because nothing ever gets replaced. On Square Town a dead site keeps its square, but nobody defends a dead site, so it stays cheap to evict — and sooner or later someone pays the $1 and puts a live site there. The wall self-cleans through evictions. See The dead-link problem: why every pixel wall rots (and what Square Town does about it).
The Million Dollar Homepage in 2026
As of August 2026 the page is up, sold out and unchanged: a frozen archive of the 2005 web. Roughly 40 % of its links no longer resolve, and it sells nothing — there is no waiting list, no resale market and no way to buy in. It remains the most-cited page in the genre and the reason every clone since has been priced at "$1 a pixel". Its 20th anniversary in 2025 produced a wave of anniversary clones, most of which are already dead or empty; 2026 has produced a second wave of "$1 forever" square walls (Square Town went further and made the square free). The MDH itself is not competing with any of them. It is finished, and that is the point of it. Our longer write-up is at The Million Dollar Homepage, 21 years later: what survived and what didn't.
Who should pick The Million Dollar Homepage
- Nobody can, in the buying sense — it sold out within five months of its 2005 launch. Visit it as history.
- If you already have a block: keep the link alive. You are in the 60 % that still works.
Who should pick Square Town
- You want the MDH idea for free, today, with a spot you choose yourself.
- You have several URLs and want each visible without designing anything.
- You want a wall with rules — evictions, a Throne, kisses, ring unlocks — rather than a static collage.
- You want to know whether anyone clicked, per square, without an account.
- You are choosing between the current cheap walls: compare Square Town vs The Forever Wall: free favicon square or $1 pixel forever?, Square Town vs Million Squares Project: static squares or evictions? and the ranked list at The best Million Dollar Homepage alternatives in 2026.
Can you use both?
Only in one direction. You cannot buy into The Million Dollar Homepage; you can claim a square for free at square.pov.town. If you own an original MDH block, putting the same URL on Square Town costs nothing and gets you the one thing the MDH never had: a click count.
FAQ
How much did a spot on The Million Dollar Homepage cost?
$1 per pixel, sold in 10×10 blocks, so the minimum was $100. The page sold out in five months for $1.04 million; the final 1,000 pixels were auctioned for $38,100.
Can you still buy pixels on The Million Dollar Homepage?
No. It sold out within five months of launching in 2005 and has been a frozen archive since. As of August 2026 roughly 40 % of its links are dead.
How is Square Town different from The Million Dollar Homepage?
Square Town gives away 1×1 squares for free, shows the site's favicon instead of an uploaded image, and adds rules: any square can be evicted for double its price ($1 minimum), the centre Throne doubles on every eviction, and the live area grows only when 75 % full. It is live over WebSockets and can be viewed in 3D.
Is Square Town "forever" like the Million Dollar Homepage?
Square Town has no expiry and nothing to renew, but you can be evicted by anyone paying double what you paid ($1 minimum). The MDH is permanent in the strict sense because nothing on it can change.
Does claiming a square give me SEO value like the MDH's links?
No. Square Town does not sell backlinks or link equity; the wall is a WebGL canvas and clicks go through a counted redirect. Claim a square for visibility, the game and the analytics.
What replaced The Million Dollar Homepage?
Nothing replaced it — it is still up. In 2026 the closest active options at the $1-or-less price are Square Town (free), The Forever Wall, Million Squares Project and Link for a Dollar; the ranked comparison is at The best Million Dollar Homepage alternatives in 2026.