How much does a hackathon cost? The budget, line by line.

1. Venue and logistics: room, Wi-Fi, power, cleaning, security, overnight setup for a 48-hour event. Zero if you run it online.
2. Food and drinks: meals, breaks, breakfasts. Grows with headcount and event hours.
3. Prizes: cash, vouchers, internships, interviews, experiences. You set the value.
4. Promotion: the time of whoever handles comms, design assets, paid ads if any. An internal hackathon only needs company channels.
5. Tools: where you publish the brief, take sign-ups and submissions, answer questions and have the jury evaluate the submissions.
6. People's time: whoever writes the brief, organizes, judges and mentors. Hours multiplied by internal hourly cost.

Add a contingency line: a margin you set based on how firm your quotes are.

For tools, what changes most is how you pay. Single-event tools charge per event. Other platforms charge by subscription, and enterprise platforms quote after a demo. Always ask what is included: sign-ups, submissions, judging, support.

Three lines often go missing from a first budget, even for small events:

• Participant access and credits: licenses, cloud or API credits, if the theme needs them.
• Workshops and office hours: time spent explaining tools and data to teams.
• Legal and tax checks on cash prizes: rules differ by country; in Italy, ask an adviser whether DPR 430/2001 on prize competitions applies. Also ask how cash prizes are taxed.

It never shows up on an invoice, so it often goes missing. List the roles and estimate hours for each:

• Organizers: goal, brief, rules, contact with judges and mentors, logistics, follow-up.
• Judges: reading the brief and criteria, reviewing submissions, final discussion, comments to teams.
• Mentors: shifts during the event and answers to teams.
• Comms: promotion, live content, the wrap-up story.
• Internal participants: in an employee hackathon, their hours on the event.

Multiply hours by each role's internal hourly cost. If judges are external, add fees or expenses. The total also shows where to save: a clear brief cuts both organizer and mentor hours.

Two steps take time: the eligibility check (does the submission follow the format and rules?) and the judges' review. The formula is minutes × submissions × judges. You measure the minutes: time a practice review before the event and correct the figure after your first edition.

Example, with values to replace with your own: 100 submissions, 5 judges, 4 minutes per eligibility check and 8 minutes per submission for each judge.

That is why a first cut before the full jury, and a window of a few days for judging, make sense. Most teams submit at the last minute, so checks pile up after the deadline. MARA gives no scores: this time stays with your people.

The hackathon figures you find online almost always come from companies that sell event organization, and they include their own service: they are not a market average. For your budget, what counts is the sum of your own lines. If you ask for a quote, check:

• What is included: brief, promotion, platform, jury, mentors, prizes, logistics.
• How you pay: per event, per participant or by subscription.
• How much work stays with you: the problem owner's and internal judges' hours stay in-house anyway.
• What you keep after the event: submissions, sign-up data and materials. Ask who owns them, too.

If you run the event yourself on a platform you use directly, there is no agency fee: you pay the cash costs and your own time.

Internal hackathons carry one cost you never see on an invoice: the hours employees spend on the event instead of their regular work. Put it in the budget so nobody discovers it afterwards. Running it remotely? See online hackathons.

Example, not a quote. Two scenarios built only from the cost lines. The only figures filled in are the certain ones: zero where a line does not apply, and MARA's public price. Fill the rest with your own quotes.

Scenario A makes the point: with an online format and a non-cash prize, the only certain cash spend is the platform. Everything else is internal time.

Use the last line to compare editions: close the budget with total and per-participant cost. Divide by attendees, not sign-ups.

More prizes give more teams a reason to finish, even when first place looks settled. Example, with a €3,000 pool to replace with yours:

Change the shares if you like: what matters is that they are in the rules before you publish.

On MARA, everyone who submits gets a verifiable certificate and a portfolio of their work, winners or not. Non-cash prize ideas: hackathon prizes.

MARA is software, not an agency. Prices are public. You pay the subscription only while a challenge is live.

VAT excluded. No publishing fee and no fee per participant. Participants never pay.

The builder cuts the "people's time" line during preparation. Describe the problem in a few lines: MARA AI asks a few questions, proposes two directions and writes the story, brief, rules, evaluation criteria, deliverables and timeline. The first draft takes minutes and you edit everything. During the event, sign-ups, submissions, announcements and Q&A sit in one place.

For a side-by-side with other platforms, agencies and DIY, see Platform, agency or DIY: comparison.

• Go online when participants study or work: no room, no catering.
• Work back from submissions your jury can judge. Start from the submissions you want and divide by the share of sign-ups who submit, taken from your previous edition. Promoting beyond what you need costs money without helping.
• Offer non-cash prizes: an interview, an internship, a day with the team, or a values-based award, for example for the boldest idea.
• Reuse what you already have: company rooms, an existing newsletter, colleagues who know the problem as mentors.
• Write a precise brief: fewer questions during the event, fewer mentor hours.
• Give judges one scoring sheet built on clear judging criteria: less debate at the end.
• Start from a structured rules template and have it reviewed, instead of drafting from scratch.

To schedule every task, use the week-by-week hackathon checklist. For goal, format, jury and follow-up, read the step-by-step guide to organizing a hackathon. Need sign-off? Use the business case template and the other free templates.