Announcing Shipaton 2025: Build, ship, and win big!

At RevenueCat, we’re all about supporting developers to build and monetize amazing apps. After the overwhelming success of last year’s Shipaton, we’re thrilled to announce the return of our global hackathon-Shipaton 2025. 

This August and September, we’re inviting developers from all corners of the globe to ship new apps and compete for over $300,000 in cash prizes and truly unique rewards.

Read on for more details, or go ahead and sign up right now.

The challenge

Your mission is simple:

• Ship a brand-new app to the iOS, Android, or Mac App Store between August 1st and September 30th, 2025.
• Integrate the RevenueCat SDK to power at least one in-app or web purchase.

Our goal is to give you that final push to ship that project you’ve had in the back of your mind but never took the time to get started.

Note: Updates to previously released apps won’t qualify – it’s all about bringing something new to life!

Bigger and better

Last year’s Shipaton sparked a frenzy of creativity and innovation across the internet. Developers blew us away by launching incredible apps, producing inspiring YouTube series, flooding social media with #BuildInPublic journeys, and creating insightful shorts on TikTok and Instagram.

Inspired by your amazing contributions, we’ve upped the ante for 2025:

• Over $300,000 in cash prizes.
• Winning apps featured prominently on a giant billboard in Times Square.
• Trip to New York City with invites to RevenueCat’s App Growth Annual conference.

Categories and prizes

Our panel of expert judges will select winners across eight exciting categories:

• Grand Prize: Build & Grow Award ($60,000): Goes to the app that releases early and iterates to grow their app the fastest. We want to hear about what you’ve done post-release to push your app growth to the next level.
• #BuildInPublic Award: For developers who shared the most interesting development journey on social media. We’re looking for compelling lessons learned or clever ideas that came from engaging with the community.
• Buzziest Launch Award: Highlights teams that make the biggest splash during their launch (e.g., viral social campaigns, creative marketing stunts).
• HAMM Award (Help Apps Make Money):  RevenueCat exists to “Help Apps Make More Money”. This award goes to the project that designs the most robust and creative monetization strategy by mixing subscriptions, virtual currency, or other revenue streams.
• Best Vibes Award: Awarded to the app developer that shares the most compelling vibe-coding story using one of our vibe-coding app partners as part of your development journey.  The full list of eligible tools will be available on DevPost before the event begins.
• RevenueCat Design Award: For the most visually interesting apps – regardless of business potential. We’re looking for innovative ideas and/or beautiful app design and animations.
• RevenueCat Peace Prize: Awarded to the project that provides the greatest social good. We’re looking for apps with big benefits to communities or society at large.
• OneSignal Boost Award: Honors the app that shows the most creative or impactful use of messaging to elevate user engagement using OneSignal.

Prize structure

Here’s how the prizes break down:

🏆 Grand Prize Winner

• $60,000
• Trip to New York City to attend the RevenueCat App Growth Annual conference
• Custom Shippy trophy (presented live on stage!)
• App featured on a massive Times Square billboard

🥇All Other Categories (except OneSignal Boost)

• 1st Place: $15,000 + custom Shippy trophy + Times Square billboard feature
• 2nd Place: $8,000
• 3rd Place: $4,000

The #BuildInPublic Award 1st-place winner will also receive a trip to New York City for App Growth Annual and trophy presentation.

📣 OneSignal Boost Award

• 1st Place: $20,000
• 2nd Place: $13,000
• 3rd Place: $9,000
• 4th Place: $5,000
• 5th Place: $5,000

Supported by the industry

For Shipaton 2025 we reached out to our favorite tech partners and asked them to contribute. These sponsors chipped in for the prize pool, will be contributing tips and tricks during official Shipaton livestreams, and have generously contributed to something new for Shipaton 2025:

Introducing, Ship Kit: Freebies for every Shipaton participant

This year, we’re introducing Ship Kit. A digital bundle of exclusive perks and tools from our sponsors to help power your app shipping journey. We’ll be revealing more details soon, but all you need to do to receive a Ship Kit is sign up to participate in Shipaton

Shipaton IRL: Events near you

We’re excited to take Shipaton directly to developers around the world with Shipaton IRL – a series of in-person and virtual events designed to connect, inspire, and educate:

• Kickoff Party: Join us August 1st at our pop-up Catfe in Tokyo, Japan.
• Local Events: Including Core Coffee Shipaton Edition in Vancouver, Canada, regular co-working spaces with CocoaHeadsMK in Skopje, Macedonia, and a Shipaton Showcase with Mobile Warsaw in Poland.
• Online Events: CommunityKit’s AppJam will help you jumpstart your Shipaton journey.

Check out our events page regularly, as new events are being added every day!

Want to host an in-person Shipaton event yourself? Apply now – we’d love to support you. We have special meetup support boxes ready to ship to you and your community.

Join the conversation on Discord!

Shipaton isn’t just about shipping code – it’s about community. Whether you’re brainstorming your first idea or prepping for launch day, the official Shipaton Discord is the place to connect, collaborate, and share the journey.

Inside, you’ll find fellow developers from around the world debugging code, creating paywall experiments, discussing launch strategies, and more. Looking to form a team? Need quick feedback? Want to hang out with other shippers? You’ll find it here.

We’ve also created a dedicated #post-engagement-boost channel where you can share your YouTube videos, Tweets, Reddit posts or other #BuildInPublic content so other participants can like, comment or share to help you reach a bigger audience. There’s also a dedicated #launch-day channel for you to share your go-live and get some community support. It’s all about creating a positive, encouraging space where we lift each other up – and help each other ship.

Come say hi 👋 and make the most of Shipaton!

Ready, set, ship!

Submissions open on August 1st and close on September 30th. Be sure to carefully review all submission requirements to ensure your app qualifies.

We’re beyond excited to see what the global developer community creates this year. Visit shipaton.com for detailed rules, submission guidelines, or skip ahead and register today. We’ll keep you updated via the email address you use there.

Let’s get shipping!

Charlie Chapman
Captain of the Shipaton