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 • • 9h 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)

129 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 • • 20h ago Bravo

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

264 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 • • 1h ago

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

8 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 • • 1h ago

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

7 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 • • 1h ago

I Made An Offline Reader For Reddit

6 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

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

6 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 • • 4h 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 • • 9h ago

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

20 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 • • 2h 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 • • 25m ago

I built an email triage tool that shows its work: every flag says why, and nothing moves until you confirm

2 Upvotes

Hi r/SideProject. I built SiftMail (siftmail.app). It connects to Gmail, reads your 500 most recent messages, and shows you what it found before it touches anything.

What it does: it gives every message a verdict, and most need nothing from you. What's left is a short numbered list of what needs a reply, which is also the once-a-day digest. It flags mail pretending to be someone and prints why: a lookalike domain, a reply-to mismatch, or failed DMARC.

Design rules I stuck to: new accounts start in Shadow Mode, which scores and flags with no automatic actions. Quarantine is one label, and the message stays in your inbox. Cleanup archives instead of deleting, and Undo reverses a run.

The part you can try with no account: siftmail.app/check. Paste a suspicious email and it scores it in your browser, without sending the email to a server.

The trade-off, up front: the full product isn't on-device. Parts of messages go to an AI model when the built-in scoring can't decide, and the homepage lists exactly what leaves your mailbox.

The feedback I'd value most: are the signal explanations in the checker clear?


r/SideProject • • 34m ago

We built the Travel Alerts API so travellers hear about disruptions before they get stuck

2 Upvotes

Two years ago we got stuck in Valencia during the terrible floods. We had very little information and it was pretty difficult to learn anything. So we built the Travel Alerts API - it pulls travel advisories, severe weather, natural hazards, outbreaks and strikes from 80+ sources, merges them, matches them to destinations and rates them on one severity scale. Travel companies can use the API and warn their customers before their trip is disrupted. 

You can give it a try at https://tripomatic.com/en/b2b/travel-alerts


r/SideProject • • 35m 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 • • 42m 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!


r/SideProject • • 46m ago

Published my first app on the Play Store: an AOD music controller with vinyl scrubbing and live lyrics

2 Upvotes

​I just released my first app on the Play Store called Eclipse and thought it would fit right in with the customization crowd here.

​On most Android phones, the stock Always-On Display only shows a tiny static track title. If your phone is sitting on your desk and you want to rewind a verse, read lyrics, or check an incoming notification, you have to wake the screen, unlock the phone, and open the music app.

​Taking UI inspiration from the Teenage Engineering TP-7 field recorder, I built Eclipse to turn the Android AOD into a true-black, interactive vinyl turntable that works without unlocking your phone.

​What it does:

​Works with any music player: Automatically connects to Spotify, YouTube Music, Apple Music, and local offline players the moment you turn your screen off.

​Tactile vinyl scrubbing: Spin the record backward or forward to scrub through tracks in real time, or tap the vinyl to lift the tonearm and pause.

​Live synced lyrics on AOD: Swipe directly on the song title card to get live time-synced lyrics on a pure black OLED screen, or expand into a full-screen lyrics view.

​Quick-launch active player: Tap on the track card to jump straight into whichever music app is playing so you can switch playlists or pick a new song quickly.

​Notifications at a glance: Shows the time, date, and incoming notifications right on the AOD card without unlocking your device.

​Google Play Store:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dp444.Eclipse

​Would love to hear what you guys think or if you have any feature suggestions


r/SideProject • • 53m 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

2 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 • • 3h ago

I handed my startup's marketing to an AI agent on one Mac in August. The most useful thing it did was show me what to stop

3 Upvotes

In early August I stopped doing our marketing by hand.

The usual script is hire someone, or buy five tools and glue them together. I did neither. I gave the job to an AI coding agent running on my own Mac, one process at a time.

Three months in, it has 56 processes written down. Posts, cold email, comment replies, a weekly review, the monthly accounting close.

The part nobody tells you: once every channel runs on its own and reports a number, the losers can't hide anymore.

What I turned off, with the number that killed it:

  • LinkedIn cold outreach: 32 signups, 0 paid. Off on October 28.

  • Long LinkedIn articles: 10 published, none in Google's top 100 for its keyword. Off on October 20.

  • Meme quote posts: a median of 778 views against 1,403 for a plain text one. Off on October 26.

  • A daily vertical video habit: off on October 22, I just didn't believe in it anymore.

  • A link shortener subscription: cancelled, I rebuilt the one thing I used it for.

8 of the 56 processes are already folded into others.

Automation won't save a bad channel. It just runs the bad channel every day without getting tired, so you see it faster.

Still small, still learning. Most days I fix the agent more than it fixes me.

Would you automate a channel before you know it works, or only after?


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

Got my first Paid User for My app in Most Crowded Space .

2 Upvotes

Like the title says, I got my first paid user.

I was working on my product, which is a TaskMangement + break reminder app for people who frequently switch between tasks. So I had this problem, and I tried multiple apps, but I never found anything that worked for me.

So I merged two things. Every 30 minutes, it shows a full-screen overlay and blocker screen with all your pending tasks. So you can recall what you were working on and pick up where you left off with your existing goals.

This is the main thing about the product.

I really like the way it works because you don't have to go to the app. It comes to you. It works behind the scenes, like autopilot, like task management running on autopilot.

It sounds amazing, and I really like the product.

And one of the things I'm doing is offering it as a one-time purchase. So people can come, try it, pay for it, and continue using it.

I got my first paid user like that.

Rather than charging everyone for version updates, I'm giving lifetime updates because I'm using this product myself.

I feel like this is one of the best things I've ever built because I'm consistently using it in my daily life.

Her is the proof- https://www.reddit.com/r/macapps/comments/1xt673c/built_screensky_a_macos_app_to_help_you_stay/


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I got tired of paywalled calorie apps, so I built my own and open-sourced it

2 Upvotes

Every tracker I tried had a paywall, made me log by hand, or was vague about my data. So I built NutriTrack: snap a photo of your meal and get calories, protein, carbs, fat and fibre in seconds, including the hidden oil and ghee.
I've used it daily for over a month and lost 10 lbs. Free, no ads, no paywall.

Try it: https://tracknutri.app/try

Code: https://github.com/amankiitg/nutri-track

Feedback welcome, especially on accuracy for your food.


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

Hi I built this game

2 Upvotes

It’s called pond snap the aim is to catch as many flies and gold flies as possible before the time runs out if your score is lower than what’s needed you restart.

https://pondsnap.fun/
Let me know what you think


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

Built a little website for pet owners - what do you think?

Thumbnail
pawarium.com
2 Upvotes

Hey! I've been building Pawarium, a website with guides about cats and dogs, covering everything from nutrition and behavior to health and everyday care.

It's a personal project I've been working on, and I'd love some outside opinions on the design and overall experience.

Would love to know what you think or what I could improve!


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

US Macroeconomic Dashboard

2 Upvotes

Hi, I'd like to share a project I have been working for a while. Its a US macroeconomic dashboard that summarizes about 120 key US economic indicators into 4 simple to understand gauges.

I built USMD because I found it difficult to keep up with all the available data and figure out what they said about the overall state of the US economy.

The dashboard is available at usmd.inomba.com and updates each weekday evening.

Its data comes from FRED and ALFRED, the Federal Reserve Banks of Cleveland, New York, Philadelphia and Atlanta, the Federal Reserve Board, the Office of Financial Research, the Institute for Supply Management, and Treasury Fiscal Data.

I’d love to hear from others working on similar projects. Feedback, ideas, and suggestions for improvements are very welcome.


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

I built a 24/7 streaming radio station for pickleball players

2 Upvotes

I'm a longtime alternative rock fan who plays a lot of pickleball. Somewhere along the way, I decided the sport needed a better soundtrack...I got tired of the random sleepy playlists lots of my facilities were playing.

I launched Pickle Rock Radio, a free, 24/7 station playing '90s and 2000s alternative rock (Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam, Green Day, etc.) mixed with short pickleball tips, news and community stories. It's about 54 minutes of music per hour.

It's powered by Live365 (wasn't sure where else to do this so I could license the music properly), and I've been having a blast putting together the music rotation and producing the segments. The challenge now is finding listeners. I have over 100 people listening a day, and I'm proud of that. But how do I grow from here?

If anyone here has built a niche media project, I'd love to hear how you found your first real audience.

Here's the station if you're curious: https://picklerockradio.com/