Best overall in-person projects

Based on creativity, execution, and impact.
All projects submitted are automatically entered for the best overall categories.
1st Place winners choose first, 2nd Place winners choose second, and 3rd place winners choose third.

Prize Pool:
1. 4x MacBook Neo

2. 4x Sony XM5

3. 4x React Miami Conference Tickets
• Brought to you by React Miami:https://reactmiami.com
• Each ticket has a total value of $500 USD.

4. MLH Winner Pins (for each team member)

To qualify, 50% of the team must be first-time hackers (submitting a project at a hackathon for the first time) Prize:
• 4x Samsung 30” Odyssey G51F monitor

Power grid companies (“utilities”) each plan future construction projects years in advance. The problem: neighboring utilities in different states often plan this work without much visibility into what the other one is doing nearby.

The challenge: Build a tool that compares at least two utilities' public future construction plans and flags where their planned work overlaps — either because the projects are physically close to each other, or because they're scheduled around the same time.

Why it matters: when utilities coordinate on nearby projects, they can potentially share labor, equipment and other critical resources.

This is a real, current problem — federal regulators (FERC) issued a rule in 2024 because utilities have historically planned in isolation, leading to waste and delays in building a reliable power grid.
- 1st place - Guaranteed internships and Macbook Airs
- 2nd place - Interviews and IPads
- 3rd place - Interviews

AI is reshaping daily life but most users don't know what data they're sharing, what they're spending, or whether they've picked the right tool. Build something that gives people real control: privacy protection, spending visibility, or confident tool selection.

This challenge asks you to build something that changes that: How do we make sure people in a connected world use AI mindfully?
- 1st place - Shokz OpenRun Bone-Conduction Open-Ear Sport Headphones, Black
- 2nd place - Staples Easy Desktop Set, Keyboard, Mouse, Mouse Pad, Laptop Stand, ProGel Pens & Sticky Notes
- 3rd place - Logitech ERGO M575S Wireless Ergonomic Trackball Mouse, Black

Waymo is an autonomous driving technology company with the mission to be the most trusted driver. With this mission in mind, we challenge you to use publicly available data to create a hack that improves transportation. The possibilities are endless: online, you can find APIs for directions, 360º street view, aerial view, elevation data, time zones, and much, much more. Whether you’re building an app to help students carpool to campus, or creating a social network to share and review the best cafes for studying, use your imagination to build the best transportation-related hack. Feel free to utilize any publicly available data like, https://developers.google.com/maps.
- 1st Place: Charged Up Kit
- 2nd Place: Pickleball Play Kit
- 3rd Place: Tower Game

Your generation is inheriting tools and systems that weren’t designed for the way you learn, work, connect, create, or navigate life.

Pick something that feels unnecessarily difficult, inaccessible, outdated, or simply missing, and build an AI-powered experience that makes it better.

Don’t recreate an existing assistant. We want to see AI used as part of the experience, not the entire experience. Build something that helps a person do something they couldn’t easily do before, and show us the difference it makes.

Challenge Requirement:

Your core experience cannot be a chatbot or depend on a chat window.

Your demo should show someone accomplishing a real task, making something, discovering something, testing something, or improving something, not simply asking AI for an answer.
Prizes: Microsoft Swag

Investors have access to more information than ever before, but understanding what they own and evaluating what to invest in next can be difficult. Performance reports, company filings, market data, economic trends, and news are often spread across different sources, making it challenging to turn information into meaningful insight. Build a product that reimagines how investors understand their current investments and research new opportunities.

Your solution might help users analyze their existing portfolio, compare investment opportunities, discover trends and risks, summarize complex information, visualize performance, or ask questions in natural language. Use any publicly available financial or economic data source and any technology stack you choose.

We’re looking for solutions that make financial information more accessible, actionable, and engaging. Whether through AI, analytics, visualization, education, or entirely new user experiences, show us how technology can improve the way investors interact with information and make decisions.
- $350 Visa Gift Card

Auto Insurance claims can be a lot and it helps to be prepared. Your goal is to create a hack that makes auto insurance simpler and helpful for students like you to reduce every day risks (like theft, fire, or accidents) where they live, study, or travel. Your hack's features could include helpful tools, gamifying experiences, or education. Be creative!
Prizes:
- State Farm backpacks
- Personal safes

How can technology support student builders collaborate to create great projects together?

Explore the challenges students face when working together beyond a short hackathon— whether it's over weeks or even months—building in-person or remotely.

Create a solution that helps students find teammates, learn from one another, share knowledge, ask for help, receive mentorship, overcome roadblocks, and stay engaged until they ship. Feel free to use your own experiences (or that of hackers around you) to find unique pain points and solve them!

Your solution should not only help manage the work—it should help people build relationships, contribute at different skill levels, and become better builders, together.
Prizes:
- $200 in Claude tokens for each team member

[Wireless Earbuds] Deploy natural, human-sounding audio with ElevenLabs. Create realistic, dynamic, and emotionally expressive voices for any project, from interactive AI companions to narrated stories and voice-enabled apps. ElevenLabs will empower you to build rich, immersive experiences without the need for actors or complex audio production, using simply the power of AI.

Integrate fully autonomous audio experiences into your hack with ElevenLabs and give your project a voice, along with giving your team the chance to win some wireless earbuds!

[MLH Swag Kits] It’s time to push the boundaries of what’s possible with AI using Google Gemini. Check out the Gemini API to build AI-powered apps that make your friends say WHOA. So, what can Gemini do for your hackathon project?

Understand language like a human and build a chatbot that gives personalized advice
Analyze info like a supercomputer and create an app that summarizes complex research papers
Generate creative content like code, scripts, music, and more
Think of the possibilities… what will you build with the Google Gemini API this weekend?

[Ledger Nano S Plus] The world of development is evolving fast and Solana is leading the charge with a network built to handle all of your infrastructure needs. Forget high fees and slow confirmations, it’s time to build applications that are fast, efficient, and scalable.

Harness Solana’s core advantages like blazing fast execution and near-zero transaction costs to make your hackathon ideas become real world projects. With Solana, the possibilities are endless.

Create a game, social app, or consumer product that relies on instant, high-frequency transactions.
Design a sophisticated trading, lending, or decentralized exchange (DEX).
Build a prototype for supply chain, identity, or payments that can handle massive, real-world volume.
Show us how you can innovate with Solana for a chance to win some cool prizes for you and each member of your team!

[Stream Deck Mini] Building high-performance apps under hackathon deadlines shouldn't mean spending half your weekend configuring complex databases or learning obscure query languages. Tiger Data extends PostgreSQL to give student developers an ultra-fast foundation for real-time data, time-series metrics, and complex analytics.

Why build with Tiger Data this weekend?

Standard SQL Power: Query massive datasets instantly using the SQL you already know, with no complex NoSQL aggregation pipelines required.

Unified Data Stack: Store relational user profiles and high-frequency metric streams side-by-side in a single database.

Instant Dashboards: Serve lag-free, real-time frontend charts using pre-computed Continuous Aggregates.

90%+ Data Compression: Store millions of events on free-tier cloud instances without running out of disk space.

Whether you’re building real-time IoT monitoring, AI-driven analytics dashboards, or financial prediction engines, show us how Tiger Data powers your project. The team that demonstrates the most innovative, impactful, and performance-driven use of Tiger Data will take home some great prizes!

[Retro Wireless Mouse] DigitalOcean offers a reliable and easy-to-use cloud platform for every stage of your project. Leverage core services like Droplets, Managed Databases, and App Platform to build, deploy, and scale your application effortlessly. Building with AI? DigitalOcean Gradient™ AI enables you to build, train, and deploy machine learning models, including access to GPU infrastructure and serverless inference!

Sign up for DigitalOcean today and reach out to your MLH Coach for credits that you can use towards building your next great hack. Build with DigitalOcean’s robust cloud infrastructure for a chance to win some great prizes for you and each of your teammates!

[Arduino Kits] Play with industry-leading LLMs on a single account using the Snowflake APIs. Adding AI capabilities into your application can be as simple as a single CURL command to Snowflake’s REST API.

Build customized applications, RAG powered chat bots, or embed AI-powered features into your app in half the time with half the hassle. Get started for free with a special, student 120-day Snowflake trial and check out this repository for an example of the Snowflake REST API in action.

[SenseCap Tracker] MongoDB Atlas takes the leading modern database and makes it accessible in the cloud! Get started with a $50 credit for students or sign up for the Atlas free forever tier (no credit card required). Along with a suite of services and functionalities, you’ll have everything you need to manage all of your data, and you can get a headstart with free resources from MongoDB University! Build a hack using MongoDB Atlas for a chance to win a M5Stack IoT Kit for you and each member of your group.

[Digital Gift Card] GoDaddy Registry is giving you everything you need to be the best hacker no matter where you are. Register your domain name with GoDaddy Registry for a chance to win some amazing prizes!

1st Place: $100 AWS credit vouchers
2nd place: $75 AWS credit vouchers