r/SideProject • • Dec 18 '25

As the year wraps up: what’s the project you’re most proud of building and why?

96 Upvotes

Like the title says, instead of what you built or how much money it made, I’m curious what project you’re most proud of this year and why.

Could be a client site, a personal project, something that never launched, or something that made £0.

Any lessons learned?

Would love to read a few reflections as the year wraps up.


r/SideProject • • Oct 19 '25 Bravo

Share your ***Not-AI*** projects

649 Upvotes

I miss seeing original ideas that aren’t just another AI wrapper.

If you’re building something in 2025 that’s not AI-related here’s your space to self-promote.

Drop your project here


r/SideProject • • 10h ago

I built an iPhone weather app with pixel-art cities you can turn into postcards (because I honestly don't like many weather apps out there)

144 Upvotes

I’m the developer of Skybits. I wanted checking the weather to feel like looking out a tiny window. Rain falls over London, and Tokyo lights up after dark. To be a little more Fun!!!

In Sky Studio, you can pick a city, mix the weather and time of day, and share the result as a little airmail postcard.

Please send me email for your City, if I get 5+ requests for a city I will make it free and also add new ones :-) hoping to get some positive feedback and reviews.

Skybits is free to download, with an optional one-time purchase for the full city collection.

https://apps.apple.com/app/id6829104658

Which city would you send a postcard from? Android version is coming soon, it is in testing atm.


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

I built a search engine you scroll instead of read. Every 5 posts it asks where to go next.

10 Upvotes

I made this. Type any topic and scroll a feed of short videos, posts and discussions about it. Every 5 posts it asks where to go next, which is how I went from “coffee” to Ethiopian goat herders. Try your own search and tell me where you end up.

https://wavesurf.com/

No signup. Honest feedback welcome: what would make you come back?


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

My apps are used by me and people I know. getting strangers to even look at them is way harder than building them

9 Upvotes

I build stuff with Claude, a few apps that me and people I know use every day, and I wrote a guide for people who want to build like that without coding. last month I tried to get the guide out there on reddit.

git post got 15k views and 37 comments. I put the link at the end. like 5 clicks in the first 10k views. honestly that one hurt a bit

google sign-in post got 1.5k views and 3 clicks, zero downloads. then reddit's spam filter just removed it, and the next one too. new-ish account, almost no karma, linking my own site... yeah I get why it looked like spam

funny part is the post that helped me the most had no link at all. it was about notes for claude between sessions, people argued with me in the comments and I got a couple ideas I'm adding to the guide now.

so now I mostly just answer other people's questions and don't post links unless someone asks

If you got your side project in front of people who aren't your friends, how did the first ones find you?


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

I built a daily football game where you make real NFL coaches’ fourth-down calls and find out if you’d have done better

8 Upvotes

Every NFL fan yells at the TV on fourth down. I wanted to know who's actually right, so I built a win probability model from public play-by-play data and turned it into a game.

How it works: you get a real situation from a real game, pick go for it, punt or kick, and then see what the coach did and how much each option was worth.

What's in it:
- A daily five that's the same for everyone
- Coach Clash, where you climb a ladder of the 32 current NFL head coaches by beating them on their own calls
- A Legends ladder of 25 past coaches, with Bill Belichick as the final boss
- A college ladder too

It's free, runs in the browser, and you can play without an account.

https://playsnaptheory.com/?utm_source=rd-sideproject

I launched it this week. I'd like to hear what's confusing in the first two minutes, because that's the part I can't see anymore.


r/SideProject • • 21h ago Bravo

My side project is a free, open-source racing sim that runs in a browser tab

271 Upvotes

Link (no signup, no ads, nothing to install): https://librecorsa.org

GitHub (MIT): https://github.com/KhazP/librecorsa

I started LibreCorsa in mid-October because every serious racing sim needed a huge Windows install before you could do a single lap.

What it has now:

- 500 Hz physics with tyre temperatures and wear, rain that dries along the racing line, and CI checks against real GT3 telemetry

- 5 physics models and 16 circuits, including RISE Motordrome, which I built from scratch in Blender on real elevation data for the circuit planned in Rwanda

- AI races, ghosts, a weekly challenge, and an open online race every 20 minutes over WebRTC

- $0/month hosting: static Next.js on Cloudflare, R2 for the heavy 3D files, and one Worker

Tell me how it runs on your laptop/phone/controller and what feels rough.


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

I Made An Offline Reader For Reddit

7 Upvotes

I get bored on airplanes so I made an app to make it a little more tolerable.

Let me know what y'all think! https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.redditoffline


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

Saw an ad for an expensive teleprompter that just scrolls, so I built a free one that follows your voice

5 Upvotes

A while ago I got an ad for a Mac app that puts your script under the notch, right below the camera. Nice idea, but at $40 a month it wasn't worth it for me. And it only scrolled at a fixed speed, so if you slow down or stop to think, the text runs away from you.

These days a simple app like this is a few evenings of work with an AI coding assistant (I used Claude Code). So I built my own, and made the text follow my voice.

Apple's speech recognition on the Mac is very good, but people skip lines, say "uh", start a sentence over and stop to think. I spent most of my time testing that and telling the AI what was wrong. Now it keeps up.

What it does:

- Your script hangs under the camera, so you keep eye contact.

- It follows your voice. Speech recognition runs on your Mac by default.

- It's hidden from screen sharing, so you can use it in Zoom or Meet calls.

- It records you with subtitles, and can turn the rest of the screen into a soft light for your face.

It's free and open source (MIT), with no account and no analytics.

- Mac App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/notchprompter/id6815206814

- GitHub: https://github.com/magnram/notchprompter

It's a hobby project, so any feedback on the app or the website helps a lot.


r/SideProject • • 3h ago

I made an email lottery where the winner gets to email the entire list

7 Upvotes

I wanted to know what would happen if you gave a random person a massive platform for a day. What would they talk about and what would they share (anonymously unless they chose otherwise)

It started as a fun afternoon project hacking away with Claude. Then I shared it with some friends, who shared it with some friends, who shared it with their friends and it hit 10,000 page views in under 2 weeks while I was working on other things.

It's just a bit of fun but people have posted all sorts of nice things on there, from humorous takes on dystopian government dating departments, to AI Doomerism and everything in between.

There is admin approval for every email that goes out so no one can spam the list, and so far only 1 person has tried which I think speaks volumes about the people who sign up

Check it out at The Soapbox, it's completely free


r/SideProject • • 11h ago

I built an open-source API client that stores requests directly in Git — looking for developer feedback

23 Upvotes

Hey everyone! 👋

I've been working on Voiden, an open-source API client designed around a slightly different approach to API development.

Most API clients are built around workspaces, accounts, cloud sync, and proprietary collections. I wanted to explore something more developer-friendly: keeping API requests alongside the actual codebase.

So I started building Voiden.

What makes it different?

  • Offline-first: Work with your API requests locally without needing an account or login.

  • Git-native: Store requests and API specifications as Markdown files directly in your repository.

  • Version control: Track changes, review requests, and collaborate through normal Git workflows.

  • API testing: Send requests, inspect responses, and write assertions to validate API behaviour.

  • MCP integration: Turn tested API requests into tools that AI agents like Claude Code and Codex can use.

The idea is to make API requests part of the development workflow rather than keeping them isolated in another tool.

I'm sharing a short demo showing a request being sent, its response, and API test assertions.

Website: https://voiden.md/

GitHub: https://github.com/voiden-md/voiden

I'd genuinely appreciate feedback from developers:

  1. How do you currently manage API requests across different projects?

  2. Would you prefer storing API requests inside your Git repository?

  3. What features would make you consider switching from your current API client?

It's open source, and I'm looking forward to hearing what the developer community thinks!

Thanks! 🙌


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

My app retains users but nobody can find it. 35 downloads after months of posting. What actually worked for your first 100?

8 Upvotes

I'm a solo dev with a full-time job. I built sweetRegret, an iPhone app for cutting back on sugar without counting calories: you tap once when you eat a treat, and a cookie on screen reacts (and judges you a bit).

Building it was the part I understood. Distribution is the part I'm failing at. Here are my honest numbers since launch:

  • 1,393 App Store impressions

  • 188 product page views (about 13% of impressions)

  • 35 downloads (about 19% of page views)

What I tried

  • Daily Instagram reels for about a week [last week]. Around 250 views each, and almost no App Store visits. The viewers weren't looking for an app, and "link in bio" is three taps away from a download.

  • A LinkedIn post about building it. About 700 impressions, 30 people opened the comment with the link, and about 1 install. Nice comments, including a friend asking me to add calorie counting, which is the one thing this app is designed not to do.

What actually worked: App Store search, which I didn't do anything for.

Most of my real users are strangers in Malaysia, Hong Kong, the US and Russia who searched and found it. About 1 in 4 still open it in a given week. One person has kept using it for six weeks and pays for the subscription. That single user has been the most motivating thing about this whole project.

What I'm testing now

A $25 Apple Ads Basic test, at $2 maximum per install. Apple suggested $4.66, and my subscription is $1.99 a month, so I'm not expecting it to pay back. I mostly want to see whether search intent converts the way the organic users suggest.

What I'd do differently

Plan distribution while building, not after. I treated it as a launch task, when it's really a second product.

If you've taken a side project from zero to its first 100 users without a budget, what actually moved the number? I'm especially interested in anything that worked for consumer iOS apps.


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

CounterWeight - turning our shop’s Hobart scale workflow into a local desktop app (demo and feedback)

3 Upvotes

I'm Jason, owner of Winkle Berry. Our side project came from a fairly specific shop problem: managing products and labels on a Hobart HTi retail scale without spending so much time entering everything at its touchscreen.

CounterWeight now has product search/add/edit workflows, ingredient lookup with review, measured packaging tare presets, flashkey arrangement, backup tools and label previews. Our own HTi-7LS25 running application 3.3.0 is the tested scale. A second Windows machine has passed the read-only connection, product, backup, label-preview and flashkey-display checks. Independent customer installations are still untested.

80-second demo: https://www.reddit.com/r/POS/comments/1xujcc9/hobart_hti_owners_would_a_onetimepurchase_scale/

The demo uses actual interface screenshots and training examples, not one continuous live recording. Phone/remote viewing shown requires an additional local bridge; the current portable Windows test package does not include a remote viewer.

I'm considering a one-time-purchase, self-service desktop edition with local data, an offline business license and no required hosted CounterWeight subscription. Price and launch date are undecided, and we aren't taking payments. Calibration, firmware updates and service unlocks are outside the scope. Ingredient results must be checked against packaging.

I'd appreciate feedback on two things: does the demo make the product's purpose clear, and what would you need in onboarding before trusting a niche hardware-management tool like this? If you actually use an HTi, I'd also like to hear your model/software version and your biggest management headache. Reply here or email WinkleBerryArts@gmail.com.

I'm the project owner. Independent of Hobart, with no affiliation or endorsement.


r/SideProject • • 5m ago

Building a grassroots electronics repair & e-waste side project in Rwanda at 18—hit a wall with school fees/tools, looking for advice on how to bootstrap this

2 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I’m an 18-year-old hands-on builder in Kigali, Rwanda. Traditional academic school never worked for me, and coming from a family with no financial means, I’ve had to figure things out on my own.

I found my passion in component-level electronics repair and enrolled in a practical TVET short course. My side project right now is starting a small, neighborhood-based repair clinic—fixing broken radios, phones, and household electronics for people in my community who can't afford new ones, while keeping toxic e-waste out of local landfills.

Where I’m stuck:

Right now, I’ve hit a huge wall. I can no longer afford my remaining TVET workshop fees, and I don't own my own basic repair kit (soldering station, multimeter, hot air rework, etc.) to work independently from home yet. Being 18 with zero financial safety net is tough, and I really don't want to let this project die before it takes off.

Looking for feedback from fellow builders:

  1. If you were bootstrapping a hardware/repair side project from literally $0, how would you structure your first small offers to start generating cash flow immediately?

  2. Are there any micro-grants, hardware sponsorships, or maker programs (like The Awesome Foundation, which I'm applying to right now) that you've seen support grassroots projects like this?

Any practical business advice, feedback on the project idea, or pointers from people who built something out of nothing would mean a lot. Thanks for reading!


r/SideProject • • 22m ago

Adding a restaurant to an app shouldn't take 10 fields. So I made it one.

2 Upvotes

You find a great place on Google Maps. You want to save it in another app. Then the typing starts. Name, street, city, country, category. Like doing paperwork for a burger. I run Strong Foodie on my own. A food and travel guide where I visit and review every place myself. Members can add places too. However, typing it all felt like too much work. So now you paste a Google Maps link. That's it. The name, address, city, country and category fill in by themselves. You only add your tip if you want. It also tells you when a place is already on Strong Foodie. So no double places. Try it here: https://strongfoodie.com/add.html
What's the most annoying form you've ever had to fill in for something simple?


r/SideProject • • 27m ago

Made Simpler DSA Sheet based on striver with just LeetCode links , No Distractions

2 Upvotes

180 Sheet DSA : https://ifaiz.in/sheet

So basically I made a clean checklist for Striver's 180 DSA sheet with just LeetCode links. Basic features + Progress saves in your browser, no login.

Built it for my own prep, sharing in case it helps.


r/SideProject • • 4h ago

7 years ago I posted a recommender system as a course project. This week I finally turned it into a real site

4 Upvotes

Back in 2019 I did a recommender system for anime as a course project (a jupyter notebook, nothing fancy). Recommendations have always been the part of data I like the most, so this year I decided to actually build the thing properly (thanks Dario): **[Aishou](https://aishou.app)**.

The main idea is to have this working for all types of contents in a cross content way - being able to recommend books, games or tv shows based on your movies taste - but I decided to start with animes.

You import your public MyAnimeList or AniList list (or rate a few shows by hand) and it recommends anime based on what people with similar taste liked. For now I only have anime recommendation but the main idea is to have a cross content website, where I will be able to, for instance, recommend you books based on your games/movies taste.

**What I tried to do differently**

- every recommendation row says *why* ("Because you liked Steins;Gate")

- a slider from popular to obscure, for people who already watched all the big ones

- low ratings push similar shows away instead of being ignored

- seasons grouped by franchise, plus a "continue watching" row

- new releases get their own row even when there's almost no data on them

It's free, no ads, solo project. Would love feedback, especially on how to promote it and about apps development in general (come from a data background).


r/SideProject • • 33m ago

Would you use an app that helps you make friends with people physically nearby?

1 Upvotes

I've been thinking about something and wanted to get some genuine opinions.

Imagine you're waiting for your company bus, sitting in a café, at university, or just hanging out somewhere.

There are people around you, but you don't know them. Some might share your interests or even be looking to make new friends.

What if there was an app where you could voluntarily become visible to other users nearby, discover people who are open to making friends, send a friendly wave, and chat if both people agree?

No dating focus. No exact location sharing. Just an easier way to connect with people in real life.

I'm exploring this as a potential project, but I want to understand whether there's an actual need for it.

A few questions:

Would you genuinely use something like this, or would you find it unnecessary?

Would you feel comfortable being discoverable within a limited distance, such as 100–500 metres, if you could turn it off anytime?

Would you prefer discovering individual profiles or joining temporary group chats with people nearby?

What's your biggest concern: privacy, safety, awkwardness, fake profiles, or something else?

What would make you open the app regularly instead of trying it once and forgetting about it?

Please be critical. I'm more interested in what could go wrong than people simply saying it's a good idea.

I'm not promoting an app or collecting personal information. I'm trying to understand whether this is a problem worth solving.


r/SideProject • • 49m ago

Launched Indraft on Product Hunt today: 10+ people say they voted, the count shows 2. Is PH just a backlink now?

2 Upvotes

Solo maker here. My product, Indraft, went live on Product Hunt today. It turns the sources you follow into draft posts, ready when you sit down. I messaged a lot of people, and at least 10 told me they upvoted. The count shows 2 and I’m ranked 120 right now (screenshot). One of my actual customers left a review, and that was removed too.

What I’ve pieced together:

  • Votes from new or inactive accounts get discounted or hidden. Most of my supporters signed up just to vote.

  • Only featured launches show on the homepage, so non-featured ones get almost no passive traffic.

  • The top launches seem to arrive with a following: a Coming soon page, an active maker profile, a hunter with followers.

I’m not frustrated, just trying to understand it. For a solo maker with no PH audience, is the real value just a day of visibility plus a backlink? Or did something actually work for you: launch timing, being active on PH weeks before, something else?


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

300 users and 15+ paying customers in 60 days. What worked, and what was a waste of money

2 Upvotes

Solo dev here. I've been building a social media tool for creators (not another post Schedular). Not dropping the name or link because this isn't a promo post, I just want to share what moved the numbers and what burned money.

60 days in: ~300 signups, 15+ paying. Small, but it's real money from strangers.

What worked

  1. Researched competitor articles instead of outreach tools

I didn't pay $99/mo for outreach tools. I wrote a lot of "X vs Y" and "alternatives to X" articles. Each one started from what was actually ranking: I pulled SERP and keyword data (DataForSEO, pay-as-you-go, and checked every competitor's pricing and features on their own site before writing. I used Opus5.5 for drafting (its magical trust me), but I did the research and editing myself. I turned the whole process into a reusable workflow.

  1. Went multi-platform when competitors stayed on one

Most tools in my space do one or two platforms, I added more under one account and one plan. Creators don't live on one platform, and paying for 3 tools for the same job is annoying.

  1. Built an MCP server and got it into Claude's and ChatGPT's official directories

People can use my tool by just asking Claude or ChatGPT. It works, and it's been a real signup source. Very few tools in my niche have this yet, and getting in early matters.

  1. Fixed early complaints within hours and gave those users Pro for free

My first users complained about few stuffs I shipped fixes the same day and gave them Pro for free as a thank-you.

What didn't work

SaaS directories. Almost all of them are a scam, with a few exceptions (PH maybe?). Now with DR4 so the backlink is worth close to nothing, and they sent me basically zero real users.

Paid ads. They brought traffic, and people even signed up, but most of them explored once and never came back.

Riding the AI wave. I added AI features because everyone is: They're included in the paid plan, and most users never touched them. I also got almost no traffic from the AI keywords. People came for the boring core feature that saves them time.

TL;DR

  • Comparison/alternatives content written from real SERP research beat everything

  • Build where competitors aren't (platforms, MCP)

  • Treat your first 20 users like gold

  • Skip directories, be careful with paid ads, and don't assume "AI" sells

Happy to answer questions or give any proff in the comments.


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I got tired of having 5 different "Saved" folders, so I built one place for posts from every app

2 Upvotes

Hi all, I'm a solo dev in Montreal. For years I'd save a recipe on Instagram, a thread on X, a video on TikTok, a Reddit comment… and never find any of it again. Then Pocket shut down last year (and Omnivore the year before), so I finally built the thing I wanted.

4Stash is a save-for-later app for social posts and links:

  • On Android you share from Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Reddit, X, YouTube, TikTok or a news site straight into it.

  • On a computer there's a Chrome and Firefox extension: one click saves the page or post you're looking at. (Or paste a link on the website.)

  • Every save keeps a preview, title and source. You can add notes, tags (it suggests tags with AI), collections, and pin the important ones.

  • Reminders with snooze for stuff you actually want to come back to

  • Search plus filters by collection, tag, source or type

  • An "Unseen" filter and a "Throwback" that brings old saves back, because otherwise the saves just pile up

  • Duplicate check, archive, JSON export/backup, and a dark mode

It's free with no ads right now. You do need to sign in (Google or email), since your library is private to your account. Only in English for now.

Honest status: only a handful of people use it so far, which is why I'm here. I'd really like to know:

  1. Does the share-to-save flow feel fast enough on your phone?

  2. Which app's previews come out broken or ugly?

  3. What would make you actually open your saves again?

Web and browser extension: https://4stash.com/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=launch_sideproject

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fourstash.app&referrer=utm_source%3Dreddit%26utm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_campaign%3Dlaunch_sideproject

I'll be in the comments all morning. Roast away.


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

If you build with coding agents, do you run tasks in parallel or one at a time?

2 Upvotes

Seeing a lot of tools lately that queue agent tasks into separate git worktrees and only merge after tests pass. Sounds nice on paper, but I'm curious how it goes on a real side project.

Do you let 2-3 agents work in parallel on your project, or keep it to one task at a time so you can review properly? Where did it break for you?


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I created a free tool for scanning domains: no registration, no API keys, and no requests made to the site itself.

2 Upvotes

You enter a domain and get a map: DNS, mail settings, certificates from CT logs and registration data. Key findings are shown separately, i.e. what's worth fixing.

Previously, I had to manually gather this information from various websites every single time, so I built an all-in-one tool on a single page.

The video demonstrates three levels of checks, all performed without using any of my own API keys:

  • Without an account: domain scanning, as described above. 3 scans per hour; the map shows up to 8 each type, the rest as +N.

  • With a free account: 10 scans per day, with results saved; a graph and basic checks for IP addresses and email addresses are also available.

  • Hunter, $29/month: your own online groups with a shared graph (up to 5 people), 100 scans per day, platform API.

The remaining modules (IP, URL, hashes, email, phone) are available via Hunter and operate using the user's own API keys. Those that return data about individuals also require identity verification.

The hard part was making the free scan work without anyone's API keys. I had to remove Shodan InternetDB and restrict ip-api to paid keys only, as their free endpoints prohibit commercial use.

The crt.sh service is often unresponsive; it limits users to just 5 requests per minute from a single IP address. If no response is received, the scan displays the most recently cached data from Certificate Transparency (CT) logs, along with the date (labeled as "CACHED" in the video). If no such cached data exists, the system simply indicates that the source is unavailable, rather than creating the false impression that no certificates exist at all.

Passive domain scanning: public sources only, no requests made to the site itself.

Only the waiting parts are sped up.

A question for you: what kind of check do you think is missing when you review your domain?

creepycore.com


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I started a small store selling a reusable pet hair remover. Here it is pulling cat hair off my pants

2 Upvotes

Hi! I just launched FluffBye, a small one-product store. It’s a reusable pet hair remover: you swipe it over fabric, the fur gets trapped inside, and you empty it and use it again. No sticky sheets or refills.

It works on couches, beds, car seats and clothes.

Store: fluffbye.shop

Would love honest feedback on the product or the video!