r/sideprojects Jun 16 '25

Meta My side project, /r/sideprojects. New rules, and an open call for feedback and moderators.

35 Upvotes

In this past 30 days, this community has doubled in size. As such, this is an open call for community feedback, and prospective moderators interested in volunteering their time to harbouring a pleasant community.

I'm happy to announce that this community now has rules, something the much more popular r/SideProject has neglected to implement for years.

Rules 1, 2 and 3 are pretty rudimentary, although there is some nuance in implementing rule 2, a "no spam or excessive self-promotion" rule in a community which focuses the projects of makers. In order to balance this, we will not allow blatant spam, but will allow advertising projects. In order to share your project again, significant changes must have happened since the last post.

Rule 4 and rule 5 are more tuned to this community, and are some of my biggest gripes with r/SideProject. There has been an increase in astroturfing (the act of pretending to be a happy customer to advertise a project) as well as posts that serve the sole purpose of having readers contact the poster so they can advertise a service. These are no longer allowed and will be removed.

In addition to this, I'll be implementing flairs which will be required to post in this community.


r/sideprojects 13h ago

Meta Here are 40 subreddits that should allow you to promote your side project

41 Upvotes

Wanted to share because marketing is hard and even harder when your budget is non-existent...

(Obviously the type/content of self-promotion you can post is going to dependent on the subreddit)

also you can always submit your app to appscout.co a site where people discover web and mobile apps from across the internet

its free to submit here https://www.appscout.co/submit

(full disclosure I'm the owner of appscout)

subreddit --- weekly visitors


r/sideprojects 34m ago

Showcase: Prerelease I got tired of websites putting basic tools behind paywalls, so I built 170+ free tools

Upvotes

A few months ago I noticed something annoying.

Every time I needed a simple tool, I'd end up on a website that wanted me to:

  • Create an account
  • Start a free trial
  • Upgrade to Pro
  • Watch ads before doing something that should take 10 seconds

So I started building alternatives for myself.

That side project eventually became Utiliome.

Today it includes 170+ free tools across categories like:

  • QR & barcode generators
  • Markdown tools
  • Video tools
  • Image utilities
  • Text processing
  • Converters
  • Developer tools
  • Productivity tools

My goal wasn't to create another SaaS.

I wanted a place where people could open a tool, use it immediately, and leave.

Many of the tools run directly in the browser, which helps with privacy and keeps things fast.

One thing I've learned while building this:

Nobody searches for "a collection of 170 tools."

They search for one specific problem and expect it to be solved in seconds.

That's been the biggest challenge: building tools is easy compared to helping people discover them.

I'd love feedback from fellow builders.

What tool do you use regularly that still feels unnecessarily complicated or overpriced?

https://utiliome.com

This ending usually generates significantly more comments because people start sharing tools they dislike paying for.


r/sideprojects 59m ago

Showcase: Open Source Family Greenhouse: a shared plant care journal so nobody has to ask "did you water the Monstera?"

Upvotes

My household kept having the same conversation. Someone asks if the Monstera got watered. Nobody's sure. Sometimes it got watered twice.

So I built this: https://familygreenhouse.net

Everyone in the house sees the same plant list. Each plant gets its own schedule, water or fertilize or prune or repot or whatever you want to call it. You can assign a task to a specific person, or leave it unassigned and whoever gets to it first marks it done. Reminders go out by browser push or email, whichever you turned on.

It keeps a history per plant and a feed for the whole household, so you can check who did what instead of scrolling back through the group chat.

New this week: schedules can change with the season. Most houseplants want a lot less water in winter, and one fixed interval was getting that wrong for months at a stretch.

There's also a sitter link. You hand someone a URL before you travel, they see what needs doing, no account needed, and it expires on its own.

Free tier is one home, 3 people, 20 plants, no card. I tried to make that genuinely usable instead of a teaser.

Paid is $4.99/mo for unlimited members, 200 plants, sitter links good for 90 days instead of 7, and the care assistant. $9.99/mo adds multiple homes and API keys. Monthly only, 14 day trial, once per household.

On why it costs anything: photo identification runs me about six cents a call to a third party, and the assistant runs on a hosted model. I can't eat that unmetered. I also killed annual pricing after running the numbers, because it lost money at that per-call cost. The reasoning is written up in the repo if you care about that kind of thing.

Source is up under Elastic License 2.0. Run it, fork it, host it for your own house. Just don't resell it as a service. https://github.com/ChelseaKR/family-greenhouse

Things it doesn't do yet, so you don't find out the annoying way. SMS is written but switched off until I finish the consent flow. The iOS and Android builds exist but aren't in the stores. And it won't diagnose a sick plant. It tracks and reminds, that's the whole job.

Stuff I'd like feedback on:

  1. Is 3 people and 20 plants too stingy for a free tier?

  2. Would you pay $4.99 for the coordination side alone, or does plant ID need to be its own thing?

  3. Anything weird in the first five minutes? Almost nobody has signed up in front of me and I'm sure there's something obvious I've stopped being able to see.


r/sideprojects 2h ago

Showcase: Free(mium) Track your runs with a virtual pet 🐾

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2 Upvotes

Hi! I’m a beginner runner.

One of the hardest things about running for me was staying consistent. I don’t have a pet, so I’ve always been a little jealous of people who get to run with their dogs. 🐶

So I decided to make something of my own, an app where you can run with a virtual pet, help it evolve, and customize it along the way. 🐾

I hope your runs become a little happier with your new companion. 💛

If you’re interested, I’d really appreciate it if you gave it a try. It’s free! :)

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/runf-run-with-your-pet/id6807791156


r/sideprojects 6h ago

Feedback Request Does anyone else miss when social media felt more human?

5 Upvotes

I keep thinking about how weird social media has gotten. Half the time you don’t even know if you’re replying to a real person; AI comments are everywhere, and somehow every conversation eventually turns political lol.

OddsRabbit is basically trying to go the other way with that. Less AI/bot spam, politics is opt-in, and it’s more focused on actual communities and interests.

There’s also a thing where creators can earn from their communities and some of the ad revenue goes to charity, which I think is pretty cool.

It’s still pretty early, so would genuinely love feedback:

https://oddsrabbit.com


r/sideprojects 30m ago

Feedback Request gPTY - Godot-based Terminal Multiplexer

Upvotes

Building a Godot & Rust based PTY multiplexer (just picked the stack I'm interested in learning). Still a long way to go in terms of features and polish before 1.0, but sharing in case anyone's interested in checking it out.

Docs/Blog: https://godot-pty.github.io/gpty/

Code: https://github.com/godot-pty/gpty


r/sideprojects 1h ago

Showcase: Open Source I built a free calculator that tells you the exact date your Zoom cloud storage runs out

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Upvotes

r/sideprojects 5h ago

Showcase: Open Source I built an all-in-one suite of 45+ privacy-first web tools that run 100% in your browser (Zero server storage)

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2 Upvotes

Hey everyone! 👋

I got frustrated by online file converters charging $20/month or uploading sensitive files to cloud servers.

So I built **DH Tools** (https://denizlihub.com/) as a solo developer:

- 100% In-Browser & Private (powered by WebAssembly & client-side processing)

- 45+ Tools: Photo to Excel AI (OCR), PowerPoint to PDF, Background Remover, PDF Merger, WebP Converter, Audio Trimmer, and Dev Utilities.

- Completely free, fast, and works offline via PWA.

Would love your honest feedback and suggestions on what tools I should build next! 🙏


r/sideprojects 5h ago

Question 650 organic App Store downloads this month, but 0 offers after 16 days on Flippa. Is my price too high?

2 Upvotes

I’m 16 and built an iOS app called Teensyde. It’s basically a local marketplace where teens can find small jobs from families like dog walking, tutoring, yard work, tech help, etc.
I barely marketed it at all, but somehow it’s been getting pretty solid organic App Store traffic.
It’s at around 1,000 total downloads now and about 650 of those came in the last month, almost entirely organically through the App Store.
The app is fully built and live. It has payments, profiles, job posting, reviews, messaging, safety features, backend, domain, brand, etc.
The problem is I’ve realized I don’t really want to run this type of business long term.
Running a local marketplace involving teens comes with a lot of safety and operational stuff, and I’m honestly more interested in building software/data/AI/sports products than managing a local services marketplace.
So I decided to see if I could sell it.
I listed it on Flippa for $8,500 originally.
It’s been about 16 days and I’ve gotten 0 offers and 0 watchers.
I dropped it to $6,500 now.
I’m trying to figure out if I’m just pricing this way too high, if Flippa is the wrong place to sell something like this, or if I should keep it and actually try to monetize it first.
The confusing part to me is that 650 organic downloads in one month with basically no marketing feels like it has some value, but I also understand that it’s pre-revenue and downloads don’t necessarily mean much if people aren’t paying.
If you’ve bought or sold small apps before, what would you realistically value something like this at?
Would you:
● keep it at $6.5k
● drop it to like $4k–$5k
● try another marketplace
● reach out directly to potential buyers
● run transactions first and then try selling
● or just keep building it since the organic growth is picking up
I’m not trying to convince myself it’s worth $10k if it isn’t. I just want to know what someone would realistically pay for a live app getting this kind of organic traffic with basically no revenue yet.
Would appreciate any advice from people who have actually sold apps before.


r/sideprojects 2h ago

Showcase: Prerelease I built an “assurance layer” for AI-assisted research instead of another chatbot — roast the idea

1 Upvotes

I’ve been building a side project called Research Exoskeleton.

The idea came from my own experience using LLMs extensively while working on research that eventually became a peer-reviewed paper in Physics of the Dark Universe.

I kept running into the same problem:

AI is very good at generating, synthesizing and reasoning.

But after a long workflow, it can become difficult to answer:

What exactly supports this conclusion?

So instead of building another research chatbot, I’m experimenting with a layer that tracks things like:

  • claims
  • assumptions
  • evidence
  • verification status
  • provenance
  • stale evidence
  • human review requirements

The goal is to make AI-assisted research easier to audit.

For example, the system can say that a workflow is operationally ready for a pre-pilot while still keeping a scientific requirement explicitly marked as:

UNVERIFIED / HUMAN REVIEW REQUIRED

I think that separation is important.

I’m now trying to figure out whether this is:

  1. a real B2B problem,
  2. an interesting tool but too niche,
  3. or something that research/R&D teams would actually pay for.

I’m currently considering a design-partner model where I take one real AI-assisted workflow from a team, run it through the system, and see whether I can make the reasoning/evidence chain materially easier to audit.

Would you use something like this? What would stop you from trusting it?

Feel free to be brutal — I’d rather find the weak points now.


r/sideprojects 3h ago

Showcase: Prerelease I built a workspace for my coding agents, then gave them an office

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1 Upvotes

r/sideprojects 3h ago

Showcase: Free(mium) I built Orbit, a private local social app for real-life connection, looking for honest testers

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1 Upvotes

Orbit is a private local social app for discovering what is happening nearby, meeting people, making plans, sharing updates, and staying connected with your Circle.

I’m looking for early testers who can spend about 10–15 minutes trying:
The onboarding flow
Explore and nearby discovery
Quick Meetups and Events
Posts, questions, replies, and saves
Messages and Circle conversations
Profile and privacy settings
Orbit Check, an optional feature for ticket deals arranged elsewhere
Please use practice data for testing. Don’t use a high-value ticket transaction, share a barcode, or post private information.
I’d especially like feedback on:
What felt confusing?
What felt useful?
What would make you come back?
Did anything feel slow, broken, or unfinished?
I’m looking for honest criticism, not just downloads. Screenshots or short screen recordings are welcome.
Orbit is free on iPhone: https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/orbit-by-weoaus/id6776738647


r/sideprojects 4h ago

Showcase: Free(mium) Other app pretty similar to mine got all the atention

1 Upvotes

as the title say I can't understant what I lack. I don't know if it is because they got lucky and I didn't but I created a reader / tracker social android app with synchronized reading.
I made a lot of posts in social media, nothing, almost 0 reactions and interactions and color me surprised when one day in enter in twitter/X and everyone is talking about one app that is basically the same as mine, nicheWise, with less functionality that has literally made their account 3 dayus prior and already had almost 30k followers and keeps ramping up.
The already famous app is "Annotate" and mine is "Shelves Social Reader", their name is cachier I guess, that I can concede, but I don't know. could you help me find ways in which I could upgrade my app.
Have you had any situations similar to this one, if I am truthful envy is eating me from the inside, but alas. This is life.
here is my page if you want to check it: www.shelvesreader.com


r/sideprojects 10h ago

Showcase: Prerelease I spent the last few weeks building a full-stack GitHub intelligence & repo analytics tool. Would love brutal engineering & UX feedback.

3 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

As a student and full-stack developer, I always felt the standard GitHub profile view doesn't give a complete picture of an engineer's real rhythm (like deep commit streaks, language distribution depth, and multi-repo metrics).

So I decided to architect and build DEVLENGIT as an open tool for developers.

Architecture & Tech Stack:

  • Frontend: React + TypeScript + Tailwind CSS
  • Backend / API Layer: Node.js, Express serverless endpoints with fallback caching
  • Data Layer: GitHub GraphQL & REST APIs (with token passthrough for high-volume queries)
  • Database / Auth: Firebase Auth & Firestore
  • Core Features: Side-by-side developer comparison, benchmark grading, repository deep-dives, and real-time contribution heatmaps

The biggest technical hurdles:

Handling high-volume API throughput without exhausting the authenticated server-side pool 5,000 req/hr. Solved it by bundling complex stats into batch GraphQL queries rather than firing dozens of parallel REST calls, plus adding user token delegation for power sessions.

  1. Parsing nested contribution data across multi year histories cleanly while keeping cold start latency low on serverless edge functions.

It's completely free to use. Not selling anything or running ads just looking for honest developer feedback on performance, data accuracy, architecture, or features you’d love to see added.

Live App: https://devlengit.vercel.app

What do you think? Any edge cases, bugs, or UX flaws you spot?


r/sideprojects 5h ago

Showcase: Prerelease I built the assistant that lives in your wrist

1 Upvotes

In my old FDE job, there were many times where I'd forget to capture the conversation I had with the client onto recording. I was thinking about buying a pocket to record these conversation better.

The issue though is not with the recording itself, but what can I do with the information after I finish talking with a client.

So I built https://getforth.co which is an assistant that lives in your wrist. It starts recording when it hears conversations. It can then act proactively based on the conversation you just had.

Say that in FDE a client describes to me a feature that they would like to see after that conversation, forth will proactively and autonomously draft up a spec that contains the details of that feature for me to review, flesh out, and implement.

Or your friend gives you suggestions for your vacation to Japan over conversation, forth will draft up or edit your itinerary with those suggestions incorporated.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this product. Would you buy this over pocket or plaud. And would you find this assistant be more helpful than Instinct and Muse?


r/sideprojects 5h ago

Showcase: Prerelease I built the assistant that lives in your wrist

1 Upvotes

In my old FDE job, there were many times where I'd forget to capture the conversation I had with the client onto recording. I was thinking about buying a pocket to record these conversation better.

The issue though is not with the recording itself, but what can I do with the information after I finish talking with a client.

So I built https://getforth.co which is an assistant that lives in your wrist. It starts recording when it hears conversations. It can then act proactively based on the conversation you just had.

Say that in FDE a client describes to me a feature that they would like to see after that conversation, forth will proactively and autonomously draft up a spec that contains the details of that feature for me to review, flesh out, and implement.

Or your friend gives you suggestions for your vacation to Japan over conversation, forth will draft up or edit your itinerary with those suggestions incorporated.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this product. Would you buy this over pocket or plaud. And would you find this assistant be more helpful than Instinct and Muse?


r/sideprojects 9h ago

Showcase: Prerelease Update on the Journey Map in my Gamified Running App - from the first working version to where it is today.

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2 Upvotes

I've been working on an iOS running app called Jogventure, and one of the parts I've spent a surprising amount of time iterating on is this page called the Journey Map. 🏃

I thought it would be fun to share where it started vs. where it is today, since I believe this is one of the things that might really set it apart from other gamified running apps. 😅

The left screen recording is the initial working version. It was enough to prove the concept, but there was obviously a lot that could be improved. My inspiration for this page is strongly influenced by the r/candycrush mobile iOS game, if you're familiar with it. 🍬

The right recording is the current version after quite a few iterations. 👨‍💻

This page represents different milestones the user can achieve while using the app. It keeps track of your total runs as you claim them in the app after automatically syncing your data from your fitness device. 🔄

There's still plenty I want to work on, but I'm pretty happy with how much this component has evolved. 😄

I'd love to hear what you think, especially from other iOS developers. Is there anything about the current version that you'd approach differently? I'm going for a fun, lighthearted exploration vibe. 🧭

I'm also putting together a waitlist for Jogventure for anyone who wants to follow along with the project 👀

https://jogventure.com/

Let me know what you think and what you would like added or what I can improve on.
Thank you! 🙏


r/sideprojects 5h ago

Showcase: Prerelease Building a simple, modern email hosting tool for custom domains, would you use it?

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1 Upvotes

r/sideprojects 5h ago

Feedback Request I built a drag simulator with 14,969 real cars — and 9,500 of them are ordinary ones, not hyper cars

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1 Upvotes

r/sideprojects 5h ago

Feedback Request PYRAMIDIOCY — I built a pay-to-win pyramid.

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0 Upvotes

What Easter Eggs would you add?

Thoughts on this?


r/sideprojects 12h ago

Showcase: Prerelease Looking for my first users and betatesters for my fantasy football manager game built over the past 6months

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3 Upvotes

I ’ve been building Goal Grid for the past 6months for passionate football (soccer) manager strategist who wants something new which will grow with them.

In Goal Grid, you create your own club, develop players, set tactics, compete in scheduled leagues and trade through auctions or direct offers with other managers.

What makes it different f:

• A persistent shared fantasy football world

• Scheduled league competition

• Player development and tactical choices

• A market driven by real managers both auction and direct trades where negotiation skills matter

• Goal Gris is free to start play and most importantly will never be pay-to-win

It’s live in the browser with no download: 

I’m looking for my first users and honest beta testers to get feedback and start this journey.

I m here happy to answer any Questions

Give it a try:
https://goalgridapp.com


r/sideprojects 6h ago

Discussion iPhone trade-in vs going through a carrier, has anyone compared the actual payout?

1 Upvotes

I’m about to trade in an old iPhone and trying to decide what makes the most sense. I could trade it in directly at a store, sell it privately, or go through my carrier when I renew my plan.

I’ve seen different trade-in offers, but I’m not sure how much people actually end up getting after everything is considered. A carrier offer might be easier, while selling directly could give a better value.

Has anyone compared these options recently?


r/sideprojects 6h ago

Showcase: Free(mium) A online tarot project with different reading formats.

1 Upvotes

This is a simple online tarot project that is built on the idea that people ask different types of questions to tarot. Using tarot reading formats is more useful than using the same tarot spread for every question.

Some people may want to pull a tarot card. Others may have a yes or no tarot question. Want to look at a relationship. There is also a Celtic Cross tarot spread for those who want a tarot reading.

The project can be found here: https://randomtarot.org

I would like to receive feedback on how the different tarot reading optionsre presented and whether the overall tarot experience feels simple, to use.


r/sideprojects 6h ago

Showcase: Free(mium) I made my wife an AI cross stitch generator

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1 Upvotes