We're excited to announce the winners of the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 2: Side Hustle!
This week, we asked you to build something with open-weight models or open-source AI that someone would actually pay for. You delivered small, specific, useful tools for freelancers, small businesses, job seekers, and niche communities, and plenty of you went the extra mile to put your project in front of a real first user. We loved seeing how often running open models was what made the business work, whether that meant keeping costs low, keeping customer data private, or tuning for a niche that general-purpose APIs miss.
Thank you to everyone who participated. Now, let's celebrate our winners!
🎉 Congratulations To…
Overall Winner
Featured Category Winners
Best Use of Render
Best Use of TabPFN
Best Use of Tinker
Best Use of DigitalOcean
Best Use of Gemma
Partner Category Winners
Best Use of Backboard
Best Use of Mastra
Best Use of Sentry Agent Tracing
Best Use of a .tech Domain
Best Use of Temporal
Prizes
- Overall winner: $250 USD, a DEV++ membership, and an exclusive DEV badge
- Featured category winners: $200 USD and an exclusive DEV badge each
- Partner category winners: $100 USD and an exclusive DEV badge each
All participants with a valid submission will receive a completion badge.
A huge thank you to our partners for making these prizes possible!
What's Next?
Hacktoberfest isn't over yet! Week 3: Slow and Steady is live right now, with $2,850 in prizes across 21 winners. There's still time to jump in:
Week 4 kicks off Monday, October 26. Sign up now so you don't miss the theme reveal:
Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge: Week 4
October 26, 2026Register now to be notified as details drop.
Happy Hacktoberfest, and congrats again to all of our winners! 🎃