Shipaton 2026 has over $700,000 in cash prizes. The Grand Prize is the headline, and every other named category pays out to three places.

The named categories reward different kinds of excellence, so most solid apps fit at least one. Read these and note which fits yours, because you choose your category when you submit.

First-place winners get more than cash: an invitation to App Growth Annual in New York, their app featured on a Times Square billboard, a "Shippy" trophy, and features in press such as 9to5Mac and 9to5Google.

The calendar

You register and submit on DevPost. Every submission must include a text description, a demo video, the public app store URL, an app icon, and screenshots.

A few eligibility facts worth knowing up front:

• You must be at or above the legal age of majority where you live.
• Students can compete through the Next Gen Award without paid developer accounts.
• Residents of a few sanctioned regions (Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Crimea, and Russia) are not eligible.
• There is no team-size limit, though only one team member receives the New York trip.
• Attending in person is optional, since prize money is transferred directly to your bank account.

If you already have an idea, skip to step 4 and start building. If you are still deciding, the fastest way to calibrate is to look at what actually won in 2025.

Some clear patterns run through the 2025 winners:

• Small and single-purpose beat sprawling. The apps that won did one thing well and shipped, rather than trying to do everything.
• iOS-first dominated. Most winners were iOS-only. Cross-platform apps clustered in the dedicated Kotlin Multiplatform category.
• AI-assisted features were everywhere, both as the product itself and as a way to build faster.
• Health, wellness, accessibility, and social impact did especially well.
• A clear monetization model from day one, not bolted on at the end.

A handful of concrete 2025 examples show the range:

When you pick, keep the constraints in mind. The app has to ship for the first time inside the window, and you can enter more than one app as long as each is a first-time launch. Choose something you can demo convincingly in a two-minute video, and something that maps cleanly to a category: a game to Best Game, a social-good app to the Peace Prize, clever monetization to HAMM, an ad-supported app to Catvertising, a beautifully crafted app to the Design Award.

Your app only qualifies once the RevenueCat SDK powers a purchase or ads, so wire monetization in early rather than the night before the deadline. Start from the SDK Quickstart, then follow the codelab that matches what you are doing. Everything below is a hands-on lab.

Set up your store

• RevenueCat Google Play Integration: create products, connect service account credentials, and link your Android app.
• RevenueCat App Store Integration: configure App Store Connect and connect your iOS app.

Build for your platform

• iOS In-App Purchases and Paywalls with SwiftUI
• Android In-App Purchases and Paywalls
• React Native In-App Purchases and Subscriptions
• Subscription-Gated Routes with Expo Router
• Flutter Purchases and Paywalls Overview
• Kotlin Multiplatform Purchases and Paywalls
• Web Billing with RevenueCat and Stripe (Next.js), if you are shipping on the web too.

Design a paywall that converts

• Build a High-Converting Paywall with Paywalls V2: a no-code, remote, native paywall.
• Animated Christmas Paywall in Compose and Divine Bible Paywall in Compose: worked examples of rich, animated paywalls.

Grow the revenue

• The 2026 Monetization Success Formula: a data-backed playbook of what to change across the funnel, with benchmarks from State of Subscription Apps 2026.
• Build a Gem Store with Virtual Currencies: sell consumable packs and manage a hard-currency balance.
• Recover Involuntary Churn from Failed Payments.
• Boost Your App Revenue with RevenueCat.

Move faster

• Use RevenueCat from Your AI Coding Agent: let your AI assistant wire up RevenueCat correctly.
• RevenueCat in Your IntelliJ IDE: inspect your dashboard without leaving the editor.
• Migrate from Google Play Billing to RevenueCat, if you are starting from an existing Play Billing codebase.

There are two ways to test purchases without spending real money, and they answer different questions. Use both, in order.

While you build, use the RevenueCat Test Store. It needs no store setup and gives instant, deterministic results, so your purchase and paywall code works long before your real products exist. Set it up with Set up Test Store for Android or Set up Test Store for iOS. This is the right tool for the first weeks of the hackathon, when you are iterating quickly.

Before you ship, run the real sandbox pass. The Test Store is an abstraction, so it does not exercise your real credentials, your real products, or the actual store Billing flow on a device. Verify that end to end in the store sandbox:

• Android: Test In-App Purchases in Google Play (Sandbox) walks through adding a license tester, a Closed testing track, a real sandbox purchase with no charge, and confirming it in RevenueCat.
• iOS: use the App Store sandbox and TestFlight to make a real sandbox purchase and confirm the transaction in RevenueCat.

If products do not load or your offering comes back empty, that is almost always a configuration mismatch. Work through Troubleshooting RevenueCat Integration and Fix: Products Not Found / No Offerings before you assume something is broken.

The most common way to lose Shipaton is not a weak app. It is a good app that never became publicly live before the deadline. Judges have to be able to download your app, so "in review" does not count. Aim to be live on the store at least one week before September 30.

Two review pipelines set your real deadline, and both are slower than first-timers expect.

The App Store is no faster in practice. Review is strict and can bounce a build for small issues, and each round-trip costs a day or more. Budget about two weeks end to end for enrollment, review, and fixes, and submit early enough to absorb at least one rejection.

Working backward from the deadline, here is a runway that holds. Adjust the dates to your own start, but keep the gaps.

Store payouts need more than a finished app. You need a verified developer account plus banking and tax details, and some of that has lead time you cannot compress in the final week. Do it in the first days of your prep, not the last.

• Apple Developer Program enrollment (individual or organization) can take several days and may require identity verification before you can use App Store Connect or TestFlight.
• Google Play developer registration now includes an identity verification step, and payout setup requires tax and banking information.
• Students competing for the Next Gen Award do not need paid developer accounts, so this step is lighter for them.

The theme of this whole guide repeats here: the paperwork is boring, it is not hard, and it only hurts if you leave it until you are also trying to pass store review. Clear it in week one.

A complete DevPost entry needs all of the following, and a missing piece can cost you the submission:

• A clear text description of what the app does.
• A demo video.
• The public app store URL.
• An app icon.
• Screenshots.

Make the demo video earn its place. Keep it short, show the app doing its one thing well, and show the paywall or purchase, because a monetization hackathon rewards seeing the money moment work. Judges watch a lot of videos, so lead with the payoff.

Pick your category deliberately. Your app usually fits more than one, so choose the one where it stands out most, using the same category mapping from step 3, and remember Next Gen for student projects.

Finally, read the official rules and judging criteria on DevPost. The detailed criteria are posted before the event begins, and details can shift, so check them again close to submission so nothing catches you out.

The winners each year are small, focused, well-monetized apps that actually shipped. Get the boring parts out of the way early, and you free up September to build the app itself. Here is the whole guide as one checklist:

• Register on DevPost and join the Discord.
• Lock an idea you can ship for the first time in the window and demo in two minutes.
• Set up your developer accounts and business or tax details in week one. Korean builders: register your business and BRN ahead of time.
• Integrate the RevenueCat SDK and get a paywall on screen, using the codelab for your platform.
• Build against the Test Store, upload an Internal testing build, create products, and connect RevenueCat.
• Verify real purchases in the store sandbox before you promote to production.
• Start Google Play Closed testing and TestFlight by September 1, and be publicly live by September 23.
• Submit a complete entry (video, screenshots, store URL, icon, description) before September 30, 11:45 PM Pacific.

Keep these links close as you go:

• DevPost: register and submit.
• Shipaton Discord: testers, help, and news.
• Zero to Ship quest: your personalized starting route.
• RevenueCat Codelabs: every hands-on lab in one place.
• FAQ: the answer to almost everything else.

Now go ship.