Somewhere right now a brown bear is standing in a waterfall waiting for a salmon. A crowd is crossing Abbey Road and pretending to be the Beatles. The sun is coming up over a beach you have never been to. And you can watch all of it, live, for free, from wherever you are sitting.
Live webcams are one of the best kept secrets of the internet. They are calm, they are real, and there is no algorithm deciding what you see next. Here are ten of the best places to find them.
Wildlife and nature
1. explore.org
explore.org runs some of the most famous live cams on the internet, including the brown bears at Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park, bald eagle nests, puppies and kittens, and the northern lights in Churchill, Canada. In late summer the bear cam is better than most TV.
2. Monterey Bay Aquarium
The Monterey Bay Aquarium live cams show sea otters, jellyfish, sharks and a huge open sea tank. The jellyfish cam in particular is close to the most relaxing thing on the internet.
Cities and famous places
3. EarthCam
EarthCam has been streaming famous places for decades: Times Square, Niagara Falls, the Statue of Liberty and hundreds more. It is the easiest way to see what a city looks like right this minute.
4. The Abbey Road crossing
The Abbey Road crossing cam points at the most photographed zebra crossing in the world. Leave it open for ten minutes and you will see someone stop traffic to recreate the album cover.
5. SkylineWebcams
SkylineWebcams is full of beautiful places: Venice canals, Italian beaches, volcanoes, ski slopes and harbours all over the world. Great when you want a holiday and cannot have one.
Something a little different
6. WindowSwap
WindowSwap is not live, but it might be the most charming site on this list. People film the view from their own window, and you get to look out of a stranger's window somewhere else in the world. Press the button for another one.
7. Virtual Vacation
Virtual Vacation lets you walk, drive or fly through cities around the world in first person videos, with the real sounds of the street. Pick a country and go.
8. Radio Garden
Not a webcam, but the same feeling for your ears. Radio Garden puts thousands of live radio stations on a spinning globe. Drag it anywhere and you are listening to whatever that town is listening to right now.
Out of this world
9. The Earth from the International Space Station
NASA streams live views of Earth from the International Space Station on NASA+ and its YouTube channel. The station goes round the planet about every 90 minutes, so you can watch a sunrise, a sunset and a lightning storm from above in a single lunch break.
10. Google Earth
Once you have watched the world live, Google Earth lets you fly anywhere in 3D. Try the "I'm feeling lucky" button: it drops you somewhere you would never have picked yourself.
Find more like this
Places like these are exactly what NexURLs is for: real websites, shared by people, that make the internet feel big again. Press Next and see where you land, or browse cool websites you probably have not seen and the weird and wonderful corners of the web.
Found a great live cam we missed? Share it on NexURLs so other people can find it too.
Featured on NexURLs
Sites from NexURLs that go with this post.
Windy Webcamswindy.comLive webcams and animated weather maps to check current conditions at beaches, harbours and coasts.
MapCrunchmapcrunch.comTeleports you to random street‑level views around the world for instant, real‑place surprises.
Astronaut.ioastronaut.ioPlays a steady feed of recent aerial and space videos showing Earth from above.
NASA Worldviewworldview.earthdata.nasa.govInteractive satellite imagery for watching real‑time Earth events like storms and fires.
Earth: live wind, weather and ocean mapearth.nullschool.netVisualizes current wind, weather and ocean conditions on a global, animated map.
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