Meet the winners of the Build Something Real hackathon

Five weeks ago, we challenged developers to build something real with Serverpod. The idea was simple: Build a full-stack app that solves a real problem. Any idea was welcome, as long as Serverpod powered the backend.

With the release of Serverpod 4, we wanted to show what is possible when you combine Flutter, Dart, and agentic coding. No complicated setup, no locked-in app builders. Just real apps, built with real code.

The response was fantastic! We saw everything from productivity tools and multiplayer games to apps tackling important problems in education and healthcare. Almost 200 entries in total.

Now, we're excited to share the projects that took home the prizes.

🥇 First place: Garden

$5,000 cash + $2,500 in Serverpod Cloud credits

Imagine being able to work with huge files stored in the cloud, without having to download or synchronize them to your computer first.

That's what Garden makes possible.

Built with Flutter and Serverpod, Garden mounts cloud storage as a regular drive on macOS. You can open files directly in your favorite applications, edit them, and save changes back to the cloud.

You could edit videos in DaVinci Resolve, work on large image collections, or share a drive with your team across multiple Macs. All without filling up your local storage or installing special plugins for each application.

Garden takes on a technically challenging problem and makes the solution feel simple. A great example of what you can build with Flutter and Serverpod!

🥈 Second place: Dream League Football

$3,000 cash + $2,000 in Serverpod Cloud credits

A complete football game, built for the browser, with online multiplayer and an entire World Cup tournament? Yes, someone actually built that in five weeks!

Dream League Football is an 11 vs 11 football game featuring all 48 nations from the 2026 World Cup. Each team has its own squad, kits, and player ratings that affect how the players perform on the pitch.

There are three ways to play:

• Solo World Cup: Pick a nation and play through the group stage and knockout rounds. The server simulates the other matches, tracks the standings, and saves your progress.
• Online multiplayer: Challenge a friend using an invite link, room code, or QR code. Matches are synchronized in real time, with results and head-to-head records saved to your account.
• Practice mode: Jump straight onto the pitch without creating an account.

The game even includes offside rules, fouls, yellow and red cards, penalty shootouts, and multiple difficulty levels. You can play with a keyboard, controller, or touch controls.

We're impressed by both the ambition and the amount of detail packed into this project.

🥉 Third place: Did It Stick?

$1,000 cash + $1,500 in Serverpod Cloud credits

Helping your child with math homework should be a positive experience. But when a child gets stuck and a parent doesn't know how to explain the problem, frustration can quickly take over.

Did It Stick? takes a different approach to AI-powered homework apps. Instead of giving children the answers, it helps parents become better teachers.

Just take a photo of a math worksheet, and the app guides you through the problems one at a time. It suggests what to say, helps you understand where your child went wrong, and gives you the next question to ask.

For example, if a child makes a mistake while multiplying, the app can identify the likely misunderstanding and suggest a way to explain it. Rather than simply revealing the correct answer, it helps the parent guide the child toward figuring it out.

It's a thoughtful use of AI that tackles a problem many families recognize. We love that it focuses on helping people learn, rather than just making the homework disappear.

🏅 Fourth place: Lotse

$500 cash + $1,500 in Serverpod Cloud credits

Building a modern app often means connecting several different services for analytics, push notifications, deep links, and user feedback.

Lotse brings all of these features together in one backend and Flutter SDK.

Instead of having separate dashboards and disconnected data, Lotse combines everything into a single event stream. You can see how users discover your app, what they do after installing it, and where they get stuck.

It also lets you create user segments, send targeted push notifications, run automated journeys, and collect feedback with screenshots and session replays.

For example, you could identify users who installed your app through a specific campaign but didn't complete onboarding, then send them a notification that takes them directly back to where they left off.

As Flutter developers ourselves, we can definitely see the value in having these tools work together.

🏅 Fifth place: BenchCall

$1,500 in Serverpod Cloud credits

You organize a football game with your friends. Everyone confirms, you book the field, and then someone drops out an hour before the match.

Sound familiar?

BenchCall makes organizing group sports much easier. Whether you're playing football, cricket, or badminton, it takes care of the things that usually end up in a messy group chat.

When someone cancels, BenchCall automatically contacts backup players, one at a time. If nobody responds, it can invite nearby players with the right skill level.

It also keeps track of who owes money for the booking, handles recurring games, and updates everyone in real time when something changes.

Everything works directly in the browser, so there's nothing to install. You can even try it without signing up.

It's a great example of taking a common everyday frustration and turning it into a useful app.

Try BenchCall: https://benchcall.serverpod.space

💬 Most Valuable Feedback: Dario Valles

$500 cash + $500 in Serverpod Cloud credits

A hackathon isn't just about building great apps. It's also a chance for us to learn how developers use Serverpod and where we can make it better.

That's why we included a special prize for the most valuable feedback.

Congratulations to Dario Valles, who won this category!

Feedback from developers helps us improve Serverpod, especially as we continue to refine the agentic coding experience. Thank you, Dario, for helping us make Serverpod better for everyone.

📣 Best Hackathon Post: EmergencyHr

$500 in Serverpod Cloud credits

Our favorite social media post came from the creator of EmergencyHr, a project inspired by a deeply personal experience.

Eight years ago, the developer lost a close friend because they couldn't find a hospital with an available doctor in time. After seeing someone share a similar story about losing their mother, they decided to build something that could help.

EmergencyHr is designed to help people in Nigeria find hospitals that can accept emergency patients right now.

With one tap, users can find nearby hospitals with available beds and doctors on duty, see when that information was last confirmed, and get directions or call for help.

The service also works through a Telegram bot, making it accessible without downloading an app.

Serverpod powers the backend, with real-time streams for hospital availability, scheduled tasks to keep information up to date, and a shared backend for both the Flutter app and Telegram bot.

It's a powerful reminder that behind every app is a problem someone cares about solving.

Congratulations to EmergencyHr for winning Best Hackathon Post!

🚀 What's next?

A huge congratulations to all our winners, and a big thank you to everyone who participated!

What excites us most isn't just the impressive technology behind these projects. It's the variety of problems people chose to solve.

In just five weeks, developers built everything from a cloud filesystem and a multiplayer football game to tools for education, healthcare, and everyday life.

This is exactly what we hoped to see when we launched Serverpod 4. With agentic coding, full-stack hot reload, and a backend built for Flutter, it's easier than ever to go from an idea to a working app.

And because Serverpod is open source, the code is yours. You can keep improving your project, deploy it wherever you want, and turn your hackathon entry into a real product.

We can't wait to see where these projects go next.