Neighborhood Hacks is a global hackathon where high schoolers use technology to solve real problems in their own communities. We believe the most impactful builders start by looking at what's broken around them and then build the fix. Over one week, students from every continent design, build, and pitch solutions to challenges they've personally witnessed at home, then join a global community of young builders doing the same thing, everywhere else.
Get started
- Join the discord and visit the offical NH Website
- Register individually or with a team
- Brainstorm a project idea related to the challenge themes
- Build your project during the hackathon period
- Submit your final project on Devpost before the deadline
Requirements
What to Build
Neighborhood Hacks allows a variety of paths for applications to submit. As long as it is something that positively impacts your community, it's fair game.
Possible tracks to go down:
- Health & Well-being
- Environment & Sustainability
- Education & Access
- Safety & Emergency Response
- Civic Engagement & Connection
- Accessibility & Inclusion
What to Submit
1. Project name
2. Elevator pitch (short 1-2 sentence summary)
3. Full written description, including a required answer to: "What is the specific problem, and how do you know it's real?" Tell us what you personally observed, who you talked to, or what data you found. This is the most important part of your submission — start here before you start building.
Also describe:
- What your solution does and how it works
- What you built it with (languages, frameworks, tools, APIs)
- Challenges you ran into
- What you'd do next if you kept building
4. Demo video (2-6 minutes, required). Show your project working
5. Public code repository link (e.g., GitHub), so judges can see your work.
Prizes
Grand Prize
$125 Cash prize
Momen Credits ($2000 worth)
MojoAuth one year license ($600 worth)
Formaloo paid workspace credits ($500 worth)
Spine one year professional license ($379 worth)
Mobbin Pro 3 months credits ($45 worth)
Pyxel Edit License ($9 worth)
Deployxa Credits ($1,000 worth)
Deployxa Team half-year access ($354 worth)
Agentboxd Team plan for 6 months ($360 value)
DevSwarm Pro one-year subscription ($96 worth)
Wasmer hosting credits ($5,000 worth)
Wasmer Pro one-year subscription ($120)
Neighborhood Hacks First Place Certificate
Second Place
$25 Cash prize
MojoAuth one year license ($600 worth)
Formaloo paid workspace credits ($500 worth)
Mobbin Pro 3 months credits ($45 worth)
Pyxel Edit License ($9 worth)
Deployxa Credits ($500 worth)
Deployxa Pro six months access ($174 worth)
DevSwarm Pro one-year subscription ($96 worth)
Wasmer hosting credits ($2,500 worth)
Wasmer Pro one-year subscription ($120)
Neighborhood Hacks Second Place Certificate
Third Place
MojoAuth one year license ($600 worth)
Formaloo paid workspace credits ($500 worth)
Mobbin Pro 3 months credits ($45 worth)
Pyxel Edit License ($9 worth)
Deployxa Credits ($250 worth)
Deployxa Pro six months access ($174 worth)
DevSwarm Pro one-year subscription ($96 worth)
Wasmer hosting credits ($1,000 worth)
Wasmer Pro one-year subscription ($120)
Neighborhood Hacks Third Place Certificate
⚠️ THIS IS NOT A CASH PRIZE
Most Unique Solution
MojoAuth one year license ($600 worth)
Mobbin Pro 3 months credits ($45 worth)
Pyxel Edit License ($9 worth)
DevSwarm Pro one-year subscription ($96 worth)
Wasmer Pro one-year subscription ($120 worth per winning participant)
⚠️ THIS IS NOT A CASH PRIZE
Best Technical Execution
MojoAuth one year license ($600 worth)
Mobbin Pro 3 months credits ($45 worth)
Pyxel Edit License ($9 worth)
DevSwarm Pro one-year subscription ($96 worth)
Wasmer Pro one-year subscription ($120 worth per winning participant)
⚠️ THIS IS NOT A CASH PRIZE
Momen Credits
All participants receive $135 worth of Momen credits, and a free optional workshop session hosted by Momen.
⚠️ THIS IS NOT A CASH PRIZE
Mobbin Pro Award
The first 235 requests after the hackathon will be given 3 months of Mobbin Pro for free. ($45 worth).
⚠️ THIS IS NOT A CASH PRIZE
Deployxa Hosting Award
Free Deployxa hosting for every participating team during Neighborhood Hacks and for 90 days afterward, including databases, TLS, and custom domains (≈$27 value) . A Deployxa engineer is available in Discord for questions.
⚠️ THIS IS NOT A CASH PRIZE
XYZ Domain Awards
The first 100 requests after the hackathon will be given a free .xyz domain for a year, no costs for a year. (≈15$ value each)
⚠️ THIS IS NOT A CASH PRIZE
Agentboxd Builder Plan Award
All Neighborhood Hacks participants aged 16 or older get 30 days of Agentboxd Builder ($15 value per participant)
⚠️ THIS IS NOT A CASH PRIZE
Backboard Developer Credits
$10 Developer credits which can be used across Backboard’s Unified API, Studio, R-CLI, and Terminal Bench. This prize is available for all participants of Neighborhood hacks.
⚠️ THIS IS NOT A CASH PRIZE
DevSwarm Pro Award
All Neighborhood Hacks participants recieve DevSwarm Pro for 1 month ($8 worth)
⚠️ THIS IS NOT A CASH PRIZE
Wasmer Pro Award
All participants receive Wasmer Pro for three months ($30).
⚠️ THIS IS NOT A CASH PRIZE
Finalist Certification
Top 10 submission's receives an official Neighborhood Hacks Finalist Certificate
RISE Research Discount
$250 off the RISE education research program for all participants.
⚠️ THIS IS NOT A CASH PRIZE
Devpost Achievements
Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:
Judges
Naveen Goel
Senior Technical Program Manager | Amazon
Akhil Kumar Mengani
Senior Software Engineer | Meta
Nikhil Singh
Lead Software Engineer | US Bank
Sai Prasad Saladi
Senior Software Engineer | US Bank
Sravanthi Kondoju
Data Platform Lead | Target
Ramesh Venkatachalapathy
Principal Engineer | AT&T
Nikhil Reddy Donapati
Software Engineer | NeuroNet Solutions Inc.
Monish Chandrashekar
Manager – Cyber Risk, Data Engineering & AI | PwC
Renata Blazhko
Product & Data Analysis Lead | MIPT
Gayathri Chilukala
Software Engineer | Microsoft — Azure OpenAI Team
Eunbean Lee
Carnegie Mellon University — School of Computer Science and Humanities
Kavitha Gopalakrishnan
Senior Product Manager | Google
Judging Criteria
-
Community Relevance
Is this a real, specific problem the team has direct knowledge of? 25% -
Impact Potential
If this worked at scale, would it meaningfully help people? 20% -
Technical Execution
Does it work? Is it reasonably well-built for the time given? 20% -
Creativity
Is the approach novel, or a copy of something obvious? 15% -
Presentation & Clarity
Can the team clearly explain the problem and solution? 10% -
Accessibility
Could the people affected actually use this? 10%
Questions? Email the hackathon manager
Invite others to compete
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