Frequently asked questions for hackathon organizers

Devpost is a platform for hosting and running hackathons. Founded in 2009, Devpost has grown into the leading home for hackathons online, used by companies, universities, and organizations to engage developers, drive product adoption, and inspire innovation.

A hackathon is a short, focused competition where you challenge developers, designers, and other builders to create something new around a theme, problem, or piece of technology, whether that's an app, a smarter workflow, or a new way of configuring a tool you already use. And they're genuinely fun: hackathons bring people together to build quickly, get hands-on, and see what's possible in a short period of time.

Organizers use hackathons for different goals. Public hackathons engage a global developer community and create top-of-funnel awareness for your product or brand. Private hackathons, run through Devpost for Teams, cover two different use cases: internal hackathons drive employee innovation, allow companies to test new tools, or surface ideas your team wouldn't otherwise have time to build, while private customer hackathons invite your own external clients to build with your technology, typically to gather product feedback and demonstrate what your platform can do.

Hackathons create hands-on product engagement that conferences and ads can't match. They incentivize participants to build and experiment with your product quickly, and they drive far higher conversion rates than passive channels like ads or conference sponsorships. Hackathon registrants on Devpost go on to submit a project at a 5 to 33% conversion rate, compared to about 1% for traditional marketing channels.

Devpost's own research also shows that developers who participate in more hackathons ship to production at progressively higher rates: developers who've done 6 or more hackathons ship to production at 31%, 2.2 times the rate of first-time participants. See our 2026 AI Trends Report for the full data.

Success metrics depend on the goals of each hackathon, but they generally break down by hackathon type.

For public hackathons, typical outcomes include growth in your developer ecosystem (new and re-engaged developers), the number of projects submitted, product feedback from users, and adoption of the tools you showcased.

For internal, private hackathons, the core metrics are typically: number of projects submitted, number of employees participating, and before-and-after surveys measuring how much participants' knowledge of a tool improved.

See more results on our customer stories page, including Grafana Labs shipping 35 to 40% of its hackathon projects, Neo4j producing a working prototype in 100% of its Graphathons (i.e., customer hackathons), and Candescent drawing 460+ employees who submitted 120 projects in its first hackathon, with the top 10 moving into active development within weeks.

Devpost public hackathons draw a wide range of participants from around the world, including professional developers (front-end, back-end, full-stack, and more), product managers, data analysts, marketers, students, and tech enthusiasts of every skill level.

The amount of work required depends on the type of hackathon you’re running and which service package you choose.

For public hackathons, Devpost offers a range of project management and marketing packages for organizers, from lighter support up to packages where our team handles the day-to-day operations of running your hackathon.

For private hackathons, Devpost for Teams includes a collection of templates that make it quick to get your hackathon set up. We also offer an additional service package that includes onboarding support, judging support, and a dedicated customer success manager.

Yes. The fastest path is talking to our sales team, who can tailor materials to your specific use case. We also have a Devpost for Teams business case guide you can use to help make the pitch to your leadership for private hackathons: business case guide.

Devpost's pricing depends on the type of hackathon you're running. Public hackathons run on Basic, Mid, and Full-service tiers, covering hackathon design, rules writing, submission screening, participant support, and judging support depending on the tier. Devpost also offers separate marketing packages (Basic, Mid, Full, and Max) if you want additional targeted promotional support.

Devpost for Teams is a separate platform and uses an annual subscription priced per seat. We also offer additional project management services for private hackathons.

Book a demo for a full cost breakdown tailored to what you're planning.

Hackathon management software handles the operations of running a hackathon, including participant registration, team formation, project submissions, judging and scoring, communication with participants, and reporting.

On Devpost specifically, both our public hackathon platform and Devpost for Teams cover these features. With public hackathons on Devpost, you can also add project management and marketing services, including official rules writing, submission screening, and marketing support.

Running a hackathon involves setting your goals and theme, choosing a format, building your judging criteria, promoting the event to the right audience, accepting submissions, and judging projects once the deadline passes.

For a deeper walkthrough, see our downloadable hackathon guides or blog posts on planning a hackathon.

The ideal hackathon length depends on the format:

• Online public hackathons typically run 6 to 8 weeks.
• In-person hackathons are usually much shorter, often just a single day or a weekend.
• Internal employee hackathons usually run 1 to 5 days.
• Private customer hackathons can be even shorter, starting at just a few hours and typically running up to 2 to 3 days.

You don't need a physical venue to host a hackathon on Devpost. Our platforms support 100% virtually-run hackathons, but you can also use our platforms to run in-person or hybrid hackathons. We don't support in-person venue logistics (sourcing a venue, catering, etc.), but you can use our platforms to handle registration, submissions, participant communications, judging, and reporting.

Both Devpost and Devpost for Teams are built to make it easy for judges to evaluate their assigned projects.

On Devpost’s public platform, organizers can run online judging, where judges score projects against a shared set of criteria, typically covering creativity, technical implementation, and potential impact. See our judging and voting help article for the full walkthrough.

On Devpost for Teams, judging is intuitive and easy for judges to access, and organizers can securely invite guest judges. Depending on how you structure your hackathon, judges can either assign each project a score or rank projects in order of preference, and the platform automatically compiles scores from every judge. Organizers also have the option to evaluate projects across different categories or judging groups. See our judging help center article for the full walkthrough.

Virtual hackathons reach a global developer audience, can run for a longer time frame, and tend to produce more polished, production-ready submissions since participants have more time to build. In-person hackathons are better suited when local community building is part of the goal.

Devpost is our public hackathon platform. Developers discover and join hackathons hosted by companies, universities, and organizations, all visible on devpost.com.

Devpost for Teams is a separate, private platform for hackathons visible only to your employees and any private guests you invite, such as customers participating in a private hackathon, used for internal innovation challenges, testing new tools internally, and company hack days.

The two platforms operate independently. A Devpost for Teams hackathon is never listed on the public devpost.com site.

Yes. Both Devpost and Devpost for Teams have reporting and analytics built in.

On Devpost, organizers can export data across five categories, projects, registrants, country, conversion, and progress, all from the Metrics tab of your hackathon. See the full help article for details on how to access and export these reports.

On Devpost for Teams, organizers can download detailed reports about the projects and participants from the hackathon page. These are found in the Metrics section of the Admin bar. From there, organizers can download two CSV reports: a Projects Report (submissions, team members, and custom form answers) and a User Status Report (registrants, roles, and submission status). See the Devpost for Teams help article for the full walkthrough.

Yes. Team formation is a core feature on both platforms, though it works a bit differently on each.

On the public Devpost platform, once you've registered for a hackathon you can indicate you're looking for teammates or send other participants a team-up request directly. See this help article for more details on how the team-up request works. Participants can also use the dedicated channel in the Devpost Discord to connect with potential teammates.

On Devpost for Teams, participants can turn on a "Team Building" toggle when creating a project to indicate they're looking for teammates along with the specific skills or roles they need. Participants can browse projects marked "Open for team building," and can search for specific people and invite them directly. See the Devpost for Teams help article for the full walkthrough.

Yes to both. Devpost for Teams is SOC 2 and ISO 27001 certified, and it's fully air-gapped and completely separate from the public Devpost platform.

Yes. Companies across nearly every industry have run hackathons on Devpost, including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP, Atlassian, NVIDIA, OpenAI, Okta, JLL, Neo4j, Candescent, Grafana Labs, Finastra, and Valenz Health. See our full customer stories for more.

A customer hackathon is a private event where a company invites its own external clients to build with its technology. This is typically done to gather product feedback, demonstrate what its product can do, increase product adoption, improve customer retention, and create a memorable customer experience. You can see examples on our customer stories page, including programs run by SAP and Neo4j.

Yes. Devpost has been the leading hackathon platform and provider since 2009, and our team has supported hackathons of every size and format, from single-company internal events to large public competitions. See our customer stories for examples, or request a hackathon consultation with our team to talk through your specific plans.

Yes, as long as both the organizers and all of the participants are students. Students can register to host an online student hackathon or an in-person student hackathon for free.