in prize money is open to students today, across 229 competitions on 12 platforms.

How this is counted

Stated in full so anyone quoting the number knows exactly what it is, and so nobody has to take it on trust.

1. 01. Only what is open, only what is stated

   Every listing whose deadline has passed is dropped before counting. Of the 683 still open, 229 publish a prize figure we can read; the other 454 say something like "see listing" and contribute nothing. Nothing is estimated to fill the gap, so the total is a floor rather than a projection.

2. 02. The total is dominated by its largest entries

   A handful of international hackathons quote pools in dollars that are an order of magnitude above anything domestic, and they carry a large share of the headline figure: the single largest is 55% of it. The median stated prize, ₹50K, describes the typical competition far better than the total does, which is why both are on this page.

3. 03. Ranges count at their ceiling

   Where a listing advertises a range, the largest figure in it is used, because that is the number the organiser is advertising. Labels that name a count rather than an amount, like "3 prizes" or "rating and ranks", are read as no figure at all.

4. 04. Other currencies are converted approximately

   Dollar, euro and pound pools are converted to rupees at fixed rates taken in 2026-07, not at a live rate. Prize pools are quoted in round numbers anyway, so the total is accurate to roughly its leading digits and should always be read as "approximately". The rupee-quoted subtotal above involves no conversion at all, which is why it is stated separately.

5. 05. Double listings are merged first

   The same competition often appears on two platforms. Duplicates are merged before anything is counted, so a prize pool is never added twice, and the platform breakdown attributes it to whichever feed we read it from.

6. 06. It is recounted, not maintained

   There is no hand-updated figure anywhere in this page. Every number here is computed from the same live listings the rest of the site renders, at the moment the page was last built, which is stated at the top.

Quoting this somewhere? Please link back to this page rather than copying the figure, since it changes every day. If you need the underlying rows for research, the source adapters are open and every listing links to the platform it came from.