Square Town vs The Forever Wall: $1 favicon square or $1 pixel forever?

Same price, same promise, different meaning of the word "forever".

The Forever Wall (theforeverwall.com) is a 2026 pixel wall: $1 buys one pixel on a 1,000,000-pixel wall, you upload an image, and it stays there permanently. Square Town (square.pov.town) is a favicon wall: $1 buys one 1×1 square on a live 3D grid, Square Town fetches your site's favicon, and you keep the square until someone evicts you for double. The difference is a permanent image you design versus a favicon square you defend.

At a glance#

The Forever Wall facts are as of August 2026 from our competitor snapshot.

What The Forever Wall does well#

Forever means forever. Nobody can take your pixel. There is no eviction, no decay, no Throne. If the appeal of a pixel wall is "put it there and never think about it again", The Forever Wall's promise is cleaner than ours. Square Town's forever has an asterisk.

You choose the image. Upload what you like. A pixel wall where you control the artwork can be a collage, a joke, a hidden message. Square Town shows only your favicon at 16 pixels, and if the favicon is bad, so is your square.

A straight line to the Million Dollar Homepage. $1 a pixel, one million pixels, upload an image: it is the 2005 model at the 2005 price, without the $100 minimum. If that is what you want, this is that. See Square Town vs The Million Dollar Homepage: $1 square vs $100 block for the original.

Nothing to keep up with. No feed, no leaderboard, nobody kissing anything. Some people find that restful.

What Square Town does differently#

A square, not a pixel. On The Forever Wall $1 buys one pixel — a single dot on a 1,000,000-pixel image, so a recognisable mark takes many dollars. On Square Town $1 buys one whole square that displays a whole favicon. One dollar, one visible icon.

No design work. Paste a URL; Square Town fetches the favicon via Google's favicon service. There is no upload, no crop, no image hosting. If your site has no favicon it gets a clown emoji and a place in the Hall of Clowns until you fix it.

Ownership with rules. Anyone can evict any square by paying double its last price. A $1 square costs $2 to take, then $4, then $8. The Throne — the 4×4 dead centre — starts at $100 and doubles on each eviction. Un-kissed icons fade to grayscale after 90 days; anyone can kiss any icon, free, and kisses are public and counted. These are the reasons to come back, and the reason the wall doesn't fill with dead links. See What is an eviction on Square Town?.

Growth is gated. Only the central 16×16 is live at launch. Each time the live area is 70 % full it grows by 8 cells in every direction, up to 1024×1024 = 1,048,576 squares. Locked area is never shown, so the wall never looks like a mostly-empty million-pixel canvas.

Live and 3D. Every buy, 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 click count, tinted by the icon's dominant colour.

Analytics per square. After buying you get a secret deed URL. It shows views, clicks and kisses; $5 one-time unlocks per-day charts. No account, no login.

Why "forever" is credible on the free tier. Square Town runs on Cloudflare Workers, D1 and one Durable Object on the free tier. There is no hosting bill to lapse. That is our answer to the "who pays for the server in year five" question every pixel wall gets asked; we don't know how The Forever Wall answers it.

Who should pick The Forever Wall#

• You want a pixel that can never be taken from you, full stop.
• You want to place your own image, not a favicon.
• You want the Million Dollar Homepage experience at $1 a pixel with no minimum.
• You don't want a game; you want a plaque.

Who should pick Square Town#

• You want a whole visible icon for $1, not a single pixel.
• You have several sites and want them all up with zero design work — Square Town for developers with many side projects: $1 per favicon.
• You want the position to matter and are willing to defend it, or at least amused that someone might take it.
• You want to know whether anyone clicked, per square.
• You like the idea that a wall should stay alive: live feed, kisses, unlocks, 3D click towers.

Can you use both?#

Yes — $2 total. Put your image on The Forever Wall for permanence, and your URL on Square Town for a spot with a click count and a live audience. Nothing about either excludes the other. If you are comparing the whole field of $1 walls, start at Every pixel wall you can still buy a spot on, ranked (August 2026).

FAQ#

What does The Forever Wall cost?#

$1 per pixel, forever, on a 1,000,000-pixel wall, as of August 2026. You upload an image and the pixel is permanent.

What does Square Town cost?#

$1 per 1×1 square, one-time. There are no sizes and no subscription. An optional $5 one-time unlock adds per-day analytics to a deed.

Is Square Town really "forever" like The Forever Wall?#

Square Town is a one-time payment with no expiry, but anyone can evict you by paying double what you paid, and an icon nobody kisses for 90 days fades to grayscale (you still own it). The Forever Wall has no eviction or decay.

Can I upload an image to Square Town?#

No. Square Town fetches your site's favicon from the URL you paste. If your site has no favicon it gets a clown emoji until you add one and press the recheck button.

Which one is bigger?#

The Forever Wall is 1,000,000 pixels. Square Town grows to 1024×1024 = 1,048,576 squares, but only the central 16×16 is live at launch and it grows by 8 cells in every direction each time the live area is 70 % full.

Does either sell backlinks?#

Square Town does not: the wall is a WebGL canvas and clicks go through a counted redirect, so there is no link equity to sell. Buy a square for visibility, the game and the analytics. We make no claim about The Forever Wall's markup.