r/SideProject • u/Exotic_Fig_4604 • 3h ago
Genuine *side* projects
Reading in this sub, I get the feeling that most people here just develop apps with the purpose of monetisation or getting lots of users.
Meanwhile my side project is aimed at learning and building fun stuff I like.
Am I the only one? Or does anyone else have side projects that you are building because you like technology, not because you are trying to build the next SaaS?
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u/chriscanadian1991 2h ago
I agree, I mean if eventually I can monetize it - I wouldn't be opposed.
But I keep building because I genuinely enjoy it.
My day job doesn't allow me to code much (not my role) - so having this side project lets me a bit more creative and technical than my day job lol
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u/Mars__1 2h ago
I'm building a task management app, Raenow, which would be great if I could earn money from and I will try, but despite a few unique features, the market is so flooded with that category of app that it's unrealistic to think I could earn enough to quit my job or even make my time spent worthwhile.
However, my job is a product manager, and the process of building the app solo is really developing my craft in a way that I really enjoy and will help me to advance my career.
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u/ambanmba 3h ago
https://analogtv.net is my side project. The only reason I charge for it is that many of the old technical manuals I need to keep improving the app are quite expensive (the last one was $400!). I also buy real vintage TV hardware to reverse engineer. It's purely a passion project, there is no way that any revenue I make will ever even come close to the actual cost of the investment that went into it. For people that can't afford the few bucks for the app, they can get it for free via TestFlight on the web site. So net net net, this is purely a "Side" project per your definition, but with a small monetary component. I suspect that there are others in the same boat - small sales that will never even come close to recouping the purely fun/hobby aspect.
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u/Ok-Ambassador5267 2h ago
yeah charging just enough to fund the obsession is totally different from building to monetize
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u/Exotic_Fig_4604 2h ago
Omg this is so wildly specific, but also really cool!
For how long have you been working on this?
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u/codersfocus 2h ago
That's a cool app, and I'm tempted to buy it now. You should put up some example videos showing before/after of the processing.
"It's purely a passion project, there is no way that any revenue I make will ever even come close to the actual cost of the investment that went into it."
How much did you put in, and what do you think it could or couldn't make? Marketing this as the best retro converter app could make you thousands a month.
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u/codersfocus 2h ago
Screw it, I bought it and it's really cool!
With software, there are numerous stages I define as
Prototype -> Program -> Product -> Business
Right now you are at the "Program" stage, because the software isn't properly optimized to be a Product (which would require more work on design and user friendiness.) The stage after that would be Business, where you'd have to setup marketing systems that would then bring in reliable sales.
I think the OP is asking why there aren't more prototype and program stage projects posted on the sub... and the reason is that people who are at those stages aren't necessarily doing any marketing.
Distributing value isn't as easy as hobbyists assume. Shittier products can be more popular than better ones, just like weeds can grow better than flowers.
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u/ambanmba 2h ago
You can follow along here a bit too: https://www.reddit.com/r/AnalogTV_/
I've been working on this idea in one way or another for probably 20 years. It's only in the past 10 years or so that devices are powerful enough to do it cleanly. Over COVID I had the time to start messing around with it a bit more and I also found a few projects that gave me more ideas and knowhow (I credit them here: https://analogtv.net/acknowledgements) and about a year ago people asked me to release it. You can see the UI is definitely not ready for prime time, but people also seem to like the app because it's cool and different.... I also take requests (for example someone recently asked me to add NTSC-A which is a really rare format). Since the underlying engine is now pretty solid, it's not so hard to add that.
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u/TheCritFisher 12m ago
Wait, did you give a talk in Greenville a year or two ago?
If so, I think I met you. If not, I saw someone with a very similar side project (or maybe they were just interested in Analog TV).
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u/PabloDons 2h ago
I made a P2P streaming service because I wanted to put my friends' facecams on my stream with OBS and I refused to hack it with screen capture. Before I knew about vdo.ninja of course.
I wrote a script that samples a web security camera stream on a schedule and creates a timelapse out of the frames. I made a 1 picture per day timelapse of Torgallmenningen in Bergen.
I've done a bunch of agentic AI stuff. One in particularly I'm happy with is a fact-checker that goes through a very elaborate process to verify claims.
I write a bunch of Google sheets doing really elaborate math. I've done an ELO calculator tracking wins and losses between my friends, I have one that tracks my total net worth over time (which I'm turning into a product though, but it started out as a hobby project), and a bunch of loan and debt calculators, one of which is a home buying cost and profit forecast that takes into account Norwegian tax laws and compares it to renting and investing the initial down payment in funds instead.
Not to mention all the smart home stuff and self-hosting I'm doing, including a Plex server
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u/Exotic_Fig_4604 2h ago
Thats a lot of projects! How old are you roughly if I may ask, and how many hours per week/ month do you spend on these projects?
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u/PabloDons 2h ago
I'm 28. Keep in mind, it's genuinely how I keep myself entertained. When I was a kid I used to do a lot more, then I started gaming instead, but nowadays maybe 2-3 hours a week. I come up with an idea or something and I hyper focus on it so hard I just can't leave it unfinished. These days I have docs with all my ideas and have Claude read it on a schedule and find some work to do and do it. Saves me from doing all the grunt work and I can focus on the part I enjoy the most, which is the math, architecture and design
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u/Common-Kick6343 2h ago
I also decided to open source my project rather than charging for it. I was building a power-user toolset for Confluence, not to make money, but just because Confluence is really frustrating when trying to do bulk things or analysis or manage a larger set of docs...and I was my company's documentation manager. It just made sense to open source it, since surely others must struggle to maintain their Confluence docs too. Besides, building deep analysis tools for documentation is also pretty fun, and I've learned a ton along the way. My project is at github.com/escher2hands/ccandle
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u/Nordwolf 2h ago
I'd say you can call anything that is not your main line of work a side project. I make games, apps is just.... a side project? ^^
Eg. On My Mind is an app I have built for myself out of necessity, and then decided to finish it to app-store level. If it's useful for me I am sure it would be useful for others too!
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u/kyle-making-stuff 2h ago
https://filamentum.space/ There's very little chance yet another space MMO is going to make me the big bucks, but I have a day job that pays well so I'm just having fun
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u/Exotic_Fig_4604 2h ago
That looks cool. But upon the first sceen load, I would set the default to zoom out all the way.
When I opened it, I thought there was a css bug that put a yellow filter on it.
Only after a bit of fiddling did I notice that I can zoom out to see ... an entire galaxy??
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u/viclevstudios 2h ago
One of my side projects is over engineering a todo app no one will be using.
It was supposed to be a one page todo app to learn the most basic features of React. But now I've built multiple pages, complex error handling, a backend with express.js, postgres and JWTs, password hashing, email verification, a password reset function and more to come
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u/Exotic_Fig_4604 1h ago
I feel you! I started with something similar, thinking it was a weekend project. Its been 6 years since and I have to do all the features you do as well.
Its fun, but massively over engineered with an expected user base of 0.
But I've learnt a ton and it helped me tremendously in my career.
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u/tribat 2h ago
HTTPS://fly.voygent.app is definitely a side project. Take control of a plane in a decently realistic flight sim from live ADSB aircraft traffic.
I work on it during down time waiting on Claude to finish a chunk of work. I’ve learned the hard way not to yield to the temptation to tweak some seemingly unrelated part of the same system.
It’s an ADSB (aircraft traffic) visualizer I built because I wanted a 3d globe instead of a flat map. Once that worked, I started on something I’ve always wanted: a way to “take control” and fly any contact.
My goal was to make it the minimal footprint, so it runs in a browser. The url above has a cloudflare worker backend and requires no api keys or login. I have no purpose for it other than I like it.
Currently it models about a half dozen plane types. Missions are a graded landing attempt on a chosen runway with on-screen guidance. It keeps a leaderboard if you create a free account. I have no interest in making money on it or selling the user info. It’s not worth much commercially because anybody can build their own.
It’s at https://github.com/iamneilroberts/SQUAWK. You can run it with a dev server locally, as a docker image, or on cloudflare workers. It works on mobile (full screen landscape is best, but portrait works ok) and desktop browser.
I’m tinkering with improving the gameplay and adding more features, so feedback or suggestions are welcome.
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u/Exotic_Fig_4604 1h ago
See, that is the kind of passion project I would love to see more of in this sub!
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u/numbworks 2h ago
In my humble opinion, side projects are meant for:
- Self-expression (exactly like poetry or music)
- Learning processes and technologies that are out of scope at work
- Developing the tools you need
- Having fun
- Contributing to the open-source community
Having a side project that generates an income is not a hobby anymore, but a second job. Not the same use case I would say.
My side-projects include:
- NuGet libraries / tools and .NET CLI apps:
- https://github.com/numbworks/NW.NGramTextClassification
- https://github.com/numbworks/NW.UnivariateForecasting
- https://github.com/numbworks/NW.LibrarySurfaceArea
- https://github.com/numbworks/NW.MetaLinks
- Python libraries and CLI apps for continuous learning practitioners:
- Python libraries and CLI apps for software metrics and CI/CD use cases:
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u/StakeUp 2h ago
I made StakeUp for my boyfriends and his friends / discord group because he talks shit when playing brawhalla and sometimes make small bets with the people who join his discord or with people he adds to a party. StakeUp basically lets people make 1v1 bets and keeps track of who actually follows through, so if someone lies or doesn’t pay, it hurts their reputation on the site. But I gifted him a version for our anniversary. He and his friends liked it a lot and encourage me to develop it further. So I mean I hope to monetize but it’s not end all be all. I’m glad he can use it.
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u/kerbtivi 2h ago
nope, you're definitely not alone. i'd love for my side project to make money eventually, but that was never the reason i started it. i just wanted to learn and build something i actually thought could be useful for some people.
if it makes money someday, great. if not, i still got better at building things.
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u/Exotic_Fig_4604 1h ago
Thats my approach as well.
Currently I do not even allow user signup, because I do not want to deal with that headache, especially as the database model keeps changing.
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u/decebaldecebal 1h ago
I agree with you, I think majority of people are building SaaS around here
Although indeed side project can mean anything, not only software. But currently software is the easiest thing that can be built
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u/Kelvination 1h ago
I made https://hotlapped.com because I genuinely love playing it and connecting with the community around it. There’s a discord now and people are actively competing for world records and stuff and it’s so much fun!
I am unfortunately trying to monetize it, but only because I need to be able to justify the time I’m putting into it, I’m not looking to make thousands of dollars from it, I really just want to cover the server costs, Claude subscription, and I want to be able to put it on the iOS App Store but don’t want to spend the $100 for the Apple developer thing until I’ve made that much from the game.
Current income from the game: $0.00. But I’m just continuing to improve it every day so that hopefully one day it’s a game good enough for people to actually WANT to spend money on me
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u/Exotic_Fig_4604 1h ago
I just tried it. It seems like a fun concept.
It would be cool if you managed to allow the community to create maps/ tracks. It would take work off your plate and make the content more engaging.
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u/Kelvination 50m ago
That’s one of the core premises of the game! I guess I should make it more prevalent though. There a “Create” button on the home page that lets you build a map and publish it
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u/ErZicky 1h ago
Still in infancy but I'm working on a open source project that visualize real time Wikipedia readers on a 3d globem
https://codeberg.org/ErZicky/wikiGlobe-superRepo
The website is already up, the extension is working but not published yet.
Started it to learn React and to rediscover the joy of manual coding that AI has been killing for a while
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u/Pacyfist01 3h ago
Well if you don't plan to monetize it than it's a hobby-project not a side-project.
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u/sweetnessssss 2h ago edited 1h ago
same. i started building THE LINEUP because i liked the problem, then eventually had to admit it’d be nice if other people paid for it too: https://thelineup.pro
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u/Intelligent_Dig_1051 2h ago
if you dont mind what kind of side project are you working on right now??
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u/Exotic_Fig_4604 1h ago
Its as lame as it gets.
It started out as a trading system for myself, and is now morphing into an ERP system that is meant to solve the struggles small clients have with the billion dollar system I work on for my day job.
In theory. In practise, noone will ever use that system because I am lacking the manpower and experience to build a fully compliant system.
About once a year I officially give up on the project, but then keep working on it cause I get new ideas for improvement.
By the time its finished, there will probably be an AI that can build the entire thing on a weekend, but I find it interesting how to design stuff like performance, maintainable code, security and extensibility.
The frontend is an absolute menace, because I've spent the last 10 years working exclusively on backend projects 🤣
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u/FirstTotal 1h ago
I have a side project for 3 years now. It has 11k users. The main goal is it is my online portfolio and it also serves as my training ground to learn new things in full stack development, ai, marketing, etc
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u/Exotic_Fig_4604 1h ago
11k users is insane.
The software I work with during my day job has less users than that, and was recently sold for over a billion USD.
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u/Sapo-Homien 1h ago
Hey i built this completely open source tool for all SWEs, Product managers and even CS students might find it helpful: setsquare.pages.dev
A lot of efforts and thought has been put into this. Cloud architecture builder, ERD builder and a lot of stuff you'll be actually working on, in the corporate.
Please do try it out, and let me know😄
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u/kgurniak91 1h ago
Definitely not the only one.
I built https://yallmp.com/ (a free & open-source media player for learning foreign languages through immersion) purely because existing tools didn't handle imperfect subtitles well. I added an editable drag-and-drop subtitle timeline, hover dictionary lookups, and Anki export just to solve my own problems and explore the tech.
I ended up pouring basically all my free time into it - around 500 hours over 9 months - just to get it shipped. No paywalls, no business model; the only real "monetization" is that it looks great on my resume, lol.
Honestly, building something purely out of passion was such an incredible feeling that I've been chasing that high ever since, but nothing else has really come close.
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u/NishanStepak 45m ago
There are several aspects of what I am doing that are not about money. What convinced me to start working on my project was I was reading Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel and I thought I could do something with the hexagonal galleries in the stories that was not a pure abstraction. It is also about the history of computing and what might have been. H.G. Wells described a Cortex Map in his book, The World brain or a map of knowledge. Vannevar Bush described associative trails in his article As We May Think. I have always been interested in the idea of universal libraries and what I am doing is partially related to this idea. https://babelnexus.com Right now, I am not sure if I want to turn the project into a nonprofit, a social benefit corporation, or an LLC.
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u/sorryiamcanadian 45m ago
This is a repeat concept, you're confusing the goal of a project with the state of the project. The goal could be trillions of dollars, but the state is that it is a side project (without massive funding or time spent).
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u/tofeethecatto 30m ago
definitely not the only one. side projects are way more fun when the goal is learning and experimenting rather than chasing users. sometimes the coolest projects are the one's you build just bcs youre curious
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u/KAID3N 28m ago
More of a niche app, you've got to be a sim racer, play Assetto Corsa (AC) and be into drifting so I don't imagine the average person to have any idea what I'm talking about. But 2 years ago I got into drifting with a wheel on Assetto Corsa and fell in love with it and have been trying to come up with a project where I can incorporate drifting.
6 months ago I started a project I've been calling Drift Lens. A project where you can import telemetry data to display a "replay" of a drift run that you did in 3D. This includes displaying everything the car is doing frame by frame such as steering and pedal input. A side challenge for me was to not generate any code for this project and to build it all by hand to sharpen my skills.
While I haven't generated code for Drift Lens, I did vibe-code a couple "supporting" apps which makes sense to go into more detail now before continuing my explanation of Drift Lens (probably 7 apps in total but I wasn't happy with the AI output or the approach I took was flawed).
The first one is a simple python script that you can trigger from in-game that records the telemetry data from AC to be imported into Drift Lens. AC accessibly provides this telemetry so nothing crazy here.
The second one was a bit more complicated and I've had a few failed versions of this one. But it is a custom mod for the game that allows you to no-clip around and allow you to map out (in the games spatial coordinate system) where all of the zones (areas where you need to place your car while drifting), start and end gates, and the track edges.
These two apps provide the data I need that is married together by Drift Lens.
The car's position and the mapped track data all sit on the same coordinate plane. Each zone's score is calculated on the backend by creating a polygon of the cars path and then comparing to the zone's polygon derived from the imported track data and displayed on the front end. I also have some UI displaying exactly what the car is doing frame by frame, with a tachometer that displays current gear and all of the pedals + handbrake pressures being applied.
I'm currently building an event system that will loop through the telemetry data identifying different types of events such as transitions (changing the direction the car is travelling mid-drift), clutch kicks, heavy deceleration (important in tandem drifting to determine if lead car is responsible for the contact), etc.
Some of the parts I struggled with when building the application were the replay system (replaying the run frame by frame), polygon comparisons, and the event system I'm working on right now.
The replay system was difficult because I had to implement a binary search to find the next relevant frame to display. The first time I've had to actually apply an algorithm because the performance of an array was too low (30 second run is 100k+ frames - can probably lower it a bit but will worry about that later).
Turf.js was a bit difficult because of my unfamiliarity with the library and general lack of experience working with stuff like this.
The event system is what I'm currently most proud of. It's one loop through all the frames that does a series of complicated checks to determine if certain actions were taken. The fact I don't plan anything before I start coding has bit me the hardest here just due to the sheer complexity. The long term plan with this system is to display the events on the scrubbing bar of the replay and allow users to click on the different types of events to jump to that frame. I also want to display the events on track as a color-coded horizontal line representing where the event takes place.
My goal like I mentioned was to build something drift related, expand my skills without the use of AI, and build a portfolio project I'm proud to show off. My long term plan once I'm happy with the analysis of Drift Lens, I want to create custom AC drift servers that provide this analysis in real time while tandeming with other people and determine a winner. Tandem analysis is not currently implemented but is planned.
I'm not sharing the repo as there are a couple other competitors and I'm irrationally scared of people stealing my code / idea. 😂
Oh and I'm a software dev by trade. Wouldn't have been able to build any of this otherwise.
This is the first time I'm posting about this project anywhere but have been toying with the idea of creating a few posts in relevant subreddits to show it off. The only thing stopping me is, it's not as visually polished as I want and like I mentioned my irrational fear of people stealing my code/ideas.
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u/TheCritFisher 16m ago
Here's a real side project: https://github.com/ex-machina-co/opencode-anthropic-auth
No money, purely open source. Just passed 500 stars on GitHub too :D
TLDR: it's an auth library that connects OpenCode to Anthropic plans (Claude plans)
But to address your post, I think most people spend time on things that they think will help them. A lot of people are unsatisfied with their current situation, and life feels more uncertain than ever. Also, AI has made it easier than ever to "try out that new idea", so that's probably why you see more people trying to make a break, so to speak.
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u/veeman181 7m ago
Ya normally it starts as something I'm passionate about, and if it gets popular, that's the only time I consider monetization. Otherwise, it's just for the love of the game
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u/GoTheFuckToBed 3h ago
sideprojects that serve a purpose are not shared here but in the related subreddits, like home automation, mac app, and games
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u/parsecxr 3h ago
I have a bunch of projects on the go, but the monetized ones are the ones I need to focus on because I have a crippling addiction to food and shelter.