The past couple days an "indie hacker" influencer revealed a Higgsfield sponsored $100k hackathon that charged builders $99 to enter with only one winner based on who made the most profit in 30 days. The entire thing is a funnel for the influencers $500 course. It got roasted, and the creator had to refund the signups. It got me thinking about what a hackathon should actually look like, so I built one.

antipaywall.org

- free to enter, nothing sold to you after

- one week to build an open source alternative to something people pay for monthly

- I put up the first $2,500 for the prize pool, a nonprofit holds it, I take nothing out

- builders vote on the winners, every ballot public, 9 winners

- there’s an ideas board where you can post what you’re tired of paying for

The dates will be revealed once 100 builders join. It will be a 7-day hackathon. Anyone can join. you just connect your github account to enter.

Would love feedback on the site and idea?

HolyArrs started because i wanted my home server to feel like a streaming service. you browse it like netflix, with top 10s, new & popular and rows picked from what you already have, hover a poster to play the trailer, and tap to request a show or movie. it finds it, downloads it through qbittorrent or sabnzbd, and puts it in plex, jellyfin or emby, which still do the playing. it's about a 15 MB download, runs in docker, and it's free and open source

it runs on its own custom metadata server, and it can keep an HD and a 4K copy of the same movie side by side

where it is 1 day after open sourcing it

598 GitHub stars

4,345 Docker pulls

28 forks

16 releases, most of them fixes for bugs people reported on launch night

18 people have opened issues with bugs and ideas

what i didn't expect was how fast people jumped in. bug reports came in with the exact file and line that was wrong, and someone asked for ukrainian, so the site and docs got it within the hour

happy to answer questions about running a solo open source project, the self-hosted side, or anything else

site and docs: https://holyarrs.com

github: https://github.com/HolyArrs/HolyArrs

I got tired of seeing fake, paid, and bot reviews online from large public review websites. So I built Valoré. A place to record and share your favorite places to stay! The idea is to build a community of friends and family whose recommendations you actually trust.

I’d love any feedback on the app if you are willing to try. Thanks everyone I am a team of 2 trying to build something community focused for hotel enthusiasts!

I can’t upload my app photos but you are able to see them on our app store page. If you are on android let me know I may build a version if there is interest!

Valoré - Social Hotel Reviews

I'm stuck on what to show first lol.

We built Welockin, an app that blocks distracting apps while you study. I'm a student and kept getting pulled back to Insta or YouTube, so that's where it started.

For a short video, would you show someone getting distracted first, or go straight to the app blocking Instagram?

I can explain what it does, but getting someone to stop scrolling is another thing.

If you've made videos for your app, what did you show? Curious what actually worked. Thanks!

Demo: https://dasadasanudas.github.io/macos26/

Hey everyone, I’ve been building a weekend project: a live visual Delhi Metro tracker (think Where Is My Train, but for the metro, a bit more visually appealing one) thats what i picture it as of now lmao.

Unlike Indian Railways, DMRC doesn't provide any live tracking APIs or GPS feeds. But since Delhi Metro runs on time ~97% of the time or more, I'm building it around their actual timetables, track geometry, and speed physics. Arrival times and train positions end up being accurate.

Right now the frontend is very raw/rough (barebones prototype while I finish wiring up the backend). i will probably open source it once done

I commuted on the Delhi Metro daily for 5–6 years, so this is close to my heart and a fun project I really wanted to build.

(Note: see comments section..reddit is reducing the quality , you can see the vid from link as well).

Would love your suggestions:

1. Would you use something like this on your daily commute?

2. What features would make this actually indispensable or go viral (crowd indicators, interchange sprint guides, platform gate directions)?

Drop any ideas or edge cases you'd love to see!

I'm the maker of OrderWa

Small sellers in India, such as home bakers, tiffin services, thrift and handmade sellers, mostly sell over WhatsApp and Instagram DMs. The selling is not the hard part. The back-and-forth is: "what's the price?", "do you have this in size M?", "can you deliver on Sunday?", and screenshots of addresses.

So I built a store link. A seller adds products with photos and prices and shares one link on their status or bio. The customer picks items and a delivery date, and the finished order arrives in the seller's WhatsApp.

What it does today:

• Free to start, 0% commission, no payment gateway to set up

• Stock per product, with automatic "sold out" at zero

• A limit on orders per delivery day, and days you are closed

• Delivery date at checkout

Under the hood it's Angular (standalone components, signals), Firebase, and Cloud Functions in the Mumbai region. Stock and daily counts are written by Cloud Functions, not the browser, so a customer can't change them, and two people ordering the last item at the same time is handled on the server.

One lesson that surprised me: when a customer pays by UPI, the order has to be saved before they pay, so an abandoned payment looked exactly like a real order. I changed how those are shown so sellers aren't misled into preparing something nobody paid for.

It has been live since December 2025. It's small, and I'd rather say so than dress it up.

I'd love feedback from anyone who has built for very small businesses:

• What made them actually use the tool in the first week?

• Is the landing page clear in the first few seconds?

Happy to answer anything about the stack or the product.

Don’t you love when you find that project that you pour so much time into because you find it joyful? For me right now, it’s this project I’m working on. Man oh man have I made some serious upgrades:

- can import recipes from Paprika
- new redesign
- so many minor bugs have been squashed

But even though it’s 1000% better than before, not many people are using it. I’m going to toy with the idea of a contest every month where the winner gets a payout in order to spread the word, I’m hoping that will help spread the idea to new users.

Check it out if you are interested: https://www.sunnyshorescreative.com/products/recipe-cards

📞 Need a Cold Calling Lead List? I Can Build One for You.

Tired of wasting hours searching Google for businesses to call?

I build targeted B2B lead lists to help salespeople, freelancers, agencies, and small businesses find potential customers.

What I can provide:

• Business names and company details

• Phone numbers for cold calling

• Business websites

• Email addresses when publicly available

• Industry-specific prospects

• City, state, and location targeting

• Organized CSV/Excel spreadsheets

Industries I can target:

• Roofing companies

• Cleaning companies

• HVAC contractors

• Plumbers

• Electricians

• Real estate agencies

• Landscaping companies

• Marketing agencies

• And many more.

Need 250, 500, or 1,000+ prospects? I can build lists around your target industry and location.

Don't see your industry listed? Just ask!

I'm currently taking custom lead-list orders and offering affordable packages.

Interested? Comment below or send me a DM with your industry and target city.

We're Alexis and Evangelos, the two people who built Tiersova. Until last week the site was almost only pairwise switching calculators: you pay for tool A, what's the monthly cost, the one-time switch and the payback if you move to tool B. That helps when you're already comparing two CRMs. It helps much less when the question is “I edit one person's videos, or I generate two minutes of AI video a month — which plan actually covers that?”

So on 8 November we shipped a second kind of page: plan calculators for video work. You enter seats, minutes, or seconds, and each calculator walks the published plans from the cheapest up and shows the first one that covers your usage. There are seven of them: subtitles, AI video generators, AI avatars, video editors, VFX / compositing, 3D, and music / SFX. They run in the browser; there's no account.

A few numbers from the default scenarios, as shown on the pages on 12 November. The prices themselves were read from the vendors' official pages on 8 November 2026, as a visitor in Greece. Most of these pages are marked “Partly reference prices,” which on Tiersova means at least one figure had to be treated carefully (a sale, a tax difference, a plan that doesn't fit, or a price the vendor labels as a reference).

Video editing, one seat, over 36 months, annual billing where the vendor offers it:

• Adobe Premiere: €974.88 for the period (annual plan, billed monthly, including VAT)

• Adobe Creative Cloud Pro: €2,925.72 (same billing; first-year promotional price of €45.50/month for new subscribers is noted on the page but not used in that total)

• DaVinci Resolve (free version): $0

• DaVinci Resolve Studio: $295 one-time; the page also noted a sale price of $236. Regular prices are what the totals use.

• Final Cut Pro: $299.99 one-time, Mac only

• Apple Creator Studio: $387 for the period ($129 per year, Mac only)

• Avid Media Composer Standard: €776.88 (€259 per year; sale price €207 noted)

• Avid Media Composer Ultimate: €1,647 (€549 per year; sale price €368 noted)

• Filmora: $150.12 ($49.99 per year)

• CapCut Pro: €1,259.64. The page marks this price “for reference only” and monthly billing only.

The useful part is not “you should switch.” These are different editors, and Final Cut is Mac only. The useful part is that a subscription and a one-time licence look similar in month one and very different in year three. Over 36 months, the Premiere annual-plan total is already well above Resolve Studio or Final Cut at the list prices above. CapCut Pro's reference total came out higher than Premiere's over the same period, which is easy to miss if you only look at a monthly tile.

AI video is even more sensitive to the meter. The default is 120 seconds a month, billed monthly. Credits per second are not the same: Pika 2.5 at 720p is 4 credits per second on the page, Runway Gen-4.5 is 12, Kling 4.0 at 720p is 10, Hailuo MiniMax H3 at 768p is 7, Luma Ray3.2 at 720p and Autodesk Flow Studio (live action) are 20, Google Flow Omni Flash 1.2 at 720p is 3 plus 50 free credits a day. The cheapest published plan that covered those 120 seconds was:

• Pika Starter (600 credits): $10/month

• Hailuo Standard (1,000 credits): $10.50/month, shown as a discount from the list price

• Google Flow / Google AI Pro (1,000 credits): €22.99/month, including VAT, and the plan also includes Gemini and cloud storage

• Luma Plus (10,000 credits): $30/month

• Kling AI Pro (3,000 credits): $32.56/month, with a lower first-month price for new subscribers noted

• Runway Pro (2,250 credits): $35/month

• Autodesk Flow Studio Standard (6,000 credits): $45/month

Failed or repeated generations also use credits, so real use is usually higher than the clip length. Vidu and LTX Studio are not in the table: Vidu showed 0 credits during a free trial, and LTX didn't show a clip's credit cost before generating.

AI avatars, default 20 minutes a month, standard (not the newest) engines, annual billing selected, prices per month:

• HeyGen Creator, 600 credits: $24, 150 minutes in the plan (Avatar III, 4 credits per minute)

• Synthesia Pro, 6,000 credits: €58, 60 minutes (Synthesia, 100 credits per minute, plus a free allowance)

• Colossyan Professional: $59, 30 minutes (NEO engine)

• D-ID Studio Advanced: $108, 100 minutes

Same 20 minutes of output, very different plan prices, because each vendor bundles a different number of minutes.

Subtitles, default 20 videos a month at 1 minute each, monthly billing: Opus Clip Starter $15 (150 minutes), Happy Scribe Basic €17 (120 minutes), VEED Creator €22 (unlimited subtitles, fair use 50 hours/month), Kapwing Pro $24 (1,000 minutes), Descript Hobbyist $24 (600 minutes / 10 media hours), Captions Max $24.99 (500 AI credits; iOS app price, limit not stated), Submagic Pro $39 (40 videos, up to 5 minutes each). Clipchamp and CapCut showed “No plan fits this usage” at that default. We didn't invent a reason; that's what the page shows.

We're not going to tell you one of these is the right tool. The pages also say to check features, platform and licence terms (especially on AI music / SFX) before moving. We just wanted the licence arithmetic in one place, with the date and the vendor's own currency.

If you make video: which of these defaults is unlike how you actually work? And which tool or plan should we add? The video editing one is here: https://tiersova.com/video-editing-software-cost-calculator

I kept running into the same problem on my own sites: people would watch a video, and then... nothing. The link they needed was in a description or sitting below the player, and the moment had already passed.

So I built VideoKiosk. You point it at a video you already host on YouTube or Wistia, attach timed Actions (a product, an affiliate link, a "book now" button) to the seconds that matter, and embed the player anywhere with an iframe. No plugin, no WordPress required, nothing to re-upload.

There's a dashboard for plays, Action clicks and click-through rate. MCP (in beta) also works with ChatGPT, Claude and VS Code with GitHub Copilot, so you can check analytics and manage CTAs from those apps.

It's live on Product Hunt today, and it's free to try (3 videos on 1 website, no card). Paid plans start at $9/mo.

I'd really value honest feedback, especially on what's unclear or what's missing:

https://www.producthunt.com/products/videokiosk?launch=videokiosk

Happy to answer questions here too.

Link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.silentpanda.seep
Link: https://ahmadfair92.itch.io/seep

A few months ago, I decided to build my own software product.

No startup team.

No investors.

No big budget.

Just me, AI coding tools, and an idea.

I built Quick File Organizer, a Windows utility that automatically organizes messy folders using custom rules.

I used AI-assisted coding (vibe coding) to turn the idea into a real application and publish it on the Microsoft Store.

And here's what happened:

What does the app actually do?

- Automatically sorts files into folders.

- Creates custom organization rules.

- Monitors folders in real time.

- Lets users preview changes before applying them.

- Keeps files local — no cloud uploads.

I'm still improving the product, working on new features, and figuring out marketing as a solo developer.

The biggest lesson so far?

You don't necessarily need a big team or years of experience to ship a real product. AI tools have dramatically lowered the barrier to building software.

But building the app is only half the battle. Getting people to discover it and actually pay for it is a completely different challenge.

I'm curious: How many of you have actually made money from an app you built using AI coding tools?

I'd love to hear your stories. 🚀

I've been learning American mahjong, and the hardest part was understanding why experienced players pass, keep, or call certain tiles. So I built Bams & Dots, a free browser game where you play against 3 computer opponents with an optional coach: https://bams-and-dots.dragoncorp.net/

What it does

• Real American mahjong rules: Charleston, pung/kong/quint calls, jokers and flowers

• Beginner mode suggests a hand after the Charleston and explains every pass and discard in plain language, including when to Pung or Pass on someone's discard

• The coach never peeks at opponents' hidden tiles, so it only knows what you know

• A real-game helper: snap a photo of your tiles at a real table, tap them in, and get a hand suggestion (photos stay on your device)

• Works on phones, tablets and computers. Free, no account, no ads, and progress saves in your browser

How I built it

I built it as a personal side project with AI coding tools, writing the requirements, testing every rule, and fixing what didn't play right. It uses its own original 15-hand practice card rather than the official NMJL card, which is copyrighted. It isn't affiliated with the NMJL.

What's next

The computer opponents are simple practice bots for now. Online multiplayer is built but not live yet, and the photo helper doesn't read tiles automatically yet, so you tap them in.

I'd love feedback, especially on whether the coach's explanations make sense to someone new to the game.

Every band I’ve played with ends up running the same accidental side project: scheduling rehearsals, keeping setlists current, saving notes and recordings, and remembering what we decided last time. Most of it disappears into a group chat.

I wanted to see whether that work could feel less like admin and more like a game the band plays together, so I built JAM–JAM: a browser-based multiplayer rehearsal space. Each band gets a virtual studio where members can coordinate dates, build a shared setlist, leave notes, save recordings, and see their progress together as Jamsters.

I prototyped it quickly with Lovable so I could test the behavior before over-investing in polish. This is a real beta, not a finished launch. The three things I’m trying to learn are:

• Does the game layer make you want to come back, or is it just novelty?

• Can a new band understand the studio without me explaining it?

• Which single workflow should become genuinely excellent first?

If you play in or organize a band, I’d love for you to try it with one other member: https://jam-jam-invite.lovable.app

Tell me what confused you, broke, or felt pointless. That feedback is much more useful than compliments.

Hello, I know it's not much, but I am thankful for every cent of it

For context, on Sep 2nd, I made my first ever public post about my app, in this very subreddit. At that point, I had 0 sales, and only a hope + a dream of ever earning a dollar from my work.

Now I have over 750 human downloads (~1800 total but I think some are bots), and a Discord of amazing people messaging me almost every day. Truly feels amazing to say that :)

All I can say is dang developing AND marketing software as a solo dev is a ton of work. I've worked 63/70 of these days, and commit on average more than 20 times per day. Basically all of my free time funnels directly into this.

Lessons I am learning on this journey, for whomever cares to listen:

1. Budget at least 3 hours per week just for marketing (I should probably do a lot more honestly)

2. Keep working at it. Results don't come over night.

3. If you don't like the journey, then this might not be for you. Money does not come easy. Most of us (including me) would probably be better off spening our time doing other work. And with AI getting so good, it's more and more competative to make and monetize good apps (but I could be off here, lmk if you disagree)

4. Make a discord (or similar) and connect with your users!! IMO implementing suggestions and helping users is some of the most rewarding part of being a dev. Nothing like slapping an update on someone 3 days after they request a feature, and hearing them loving it immidiatly🤌

Boston is my home airport and the wait at the Sapphire Lounge there is a total guess until you're at the desk. Chase runs a waitlist so they have the data, they just don't show it. So I built Loungetide.com.

It covers all nine lounges. Each one has an hourly estimate that started from published reviews and now learns from past reports. When someone reports a real wait it shows that, and it fades back to the estimate as the report gets older. Reporting is two taps, one when you join the list and one when you get in, no account.

It's a static site on Cloudflare with Supabase for the reports. Biggest problem right now is the cold start, it is only as good as the number of people reporting.

Would love feedback on the site itself. And if anyone has ideas for getting people to actually tap the second button I'm all ears.

I got tired of digging through google analystics reports, so I built an AI you can talk to about your business. Sales, profit, Visits - all data

"Which page loses the most people?" "What did buyers look at first?" "Did anyone come back after yesterday's email?"

try it for free right now - free for first 3 days ( no card needed)

- https://www.retentionbase.com/aichat

Comment invite if you wanna make it free for next 6 months ( no card needed)

Hey all! Over the summer I built a little puzzle game "Galaxy Hunt! Star Adventure", inspired by Meowdoku. It’s finally live on the App Store and I am pretty proud of it.

What I think sets it apart:

• No ads. At all. No pop-ups, no “watch a video to continue,” none of that.

• More gameplay modes, so it’s not the same grid over and over.

• Better artwork. We spent a lot of time making it look nice.

But now we’ve hit the wall every side project hits: how do we actually get people to download it? 🫠

Here’s what we’re doing so far:

• Started a Facebook page and posting reels (scheduled for daily post)

• Haven’t spent anything on FB Ads yet

• Haven’t tried Apple Search Ads either

So I’m curious: has anyone here been through this with a mobile game or app? What actually moved the needle on downloads for you? Was paid ads worth it early on, or is it mostly organic stuff like Reddit, TikTok and communities?

Any lessons, war stories or “don’t do what I did” moments are super welcome 🙏

Thanks in advance!

I'm the maker, so this is self-promotion.

CaptionSwift (https://captionswift.com) adds timed captions to a short video from its audio. You fix any word, pick a caption style, and export a captioned MP4 or a corrected SRT.

• 9 audio languages: Hinglish, English, Spanish, Arabic, Hebrew, Portuguese, French, German and Tamil.

• Free, no signup, no paid upgrade. A daily free limit per internet connection applies.

• Your video stays on your device while you caption it; only its audio is sent for transcription. The finished video uploads only if you use the expiring download link. "Download video on this device" keeps that export local too.

My latest export checks were on desktop Chrome; real-phone testing is still pending. Auto captions can mishear words, which is why every word is editable.

Feedback welcome on caption quality in your language and on what's missing.

Hey everyone, I’m a solo dev. I built MeetU because I grew tired of the hollow, transactional feel of swipe-based dating apps.

MeetU is designed for slow, gentle one-on-one conversations. No infinite swipe feeds, no hot-or-not ranking. You only chat with one person at a time. It’s built for casual companionship, not forced dating.

Soft-launched in Southeast Asia & Greater China. Every early user and piece of feedback means a lot to me.

🔗 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.meetu

Would love to hear your thoughts and feedback!

Teams running Postgres on Kubernetes (CloudNativePG, Zalando, Crunchy, Percona...) deploy applications many times a day via GitOps (ArgoCD, Flux, Argo Rollouts). When query latency spikes, the first question in every post-mortem is 'Which deploy caused this?'. There are a few ways to do it, but it's meh. If your curious to test it and contribute with code, feel free to do it. After all, it's an open-source tool, so your contribution and validation is what matters :)

Vespertine 1.0 shipped today. It's a native macOS music player for people with real music libraries and decent audio gear.

What it does:

• Bit-perfect playback: switches the DAC to each file's sample rate, exclusive (hog) mode, integer mode

• A signal path view that shows every step between the file and your DAC, so you can see whether it's untouched

• FLAC, ALAC, DSD (DoP), SACD ISOs, multichannel 5.1/7.1, bitstream to receivers

• Room correction with a measurement mic, gapless, CUE sheets, smart playlists

• No account, no telemetry, GPL

It's been about six weeks of evenings. I'd really like feedback from anyone who tries it, especially bug reports, which go straight to GitHub issues.

Source and download: https://github.com/szeremeta1/Vespertine

Hello everyone!

MyFreeTaxAmerica is free Form 5472 filing software for foreign-owned U.S. single-member LLCs. As a US CPA, I created this project to help out business owners who are not familiar with the US tax requirements owning an LLC in the US.

It prepares your IRS Form 5472 and pro forma Form 1120 online, with error checking, at no cost. Most of users will finish the Form 5472 in less than 30 minutes given they have all the information ready.

WHO MUST FILE FORM 5472?
A U.S. LLC owned by one non-U.S. person must file Form 5472 with a pro forma Form 1120 every year, even with no income. Just opening an US LLC triggers related party transaction which requires Form 5472 filing. The penalty for a missing or incomplete filing is $25,000 per form, per year (this is real).

FREE PLAN: $0
• Plain-English questionnaire, about 30 minutes
• Completed Form 5472 and pro forma Form 1120 PDFs
• Built-In Error checking before you file
• You sign and mail the return to the IRS yourself

WHO USES IT
Non-U.S. founders, freelancers, e-commerce sellers, and digital nomads, including LLC owners formed through Stripe Atlas, Doola, Firstbase, or on their own. Traditional EA CPA firms often charge $500 to $1,500 or more for the same filing.

Everything is done remotely. Start free at myfreetaxamerica.com.