Databricks Free Edition Hackathon

November 5-14, 2025

Use Databricks Free Edition with your own datasets or other sample datasets to create a five-minute demo posted on LinkedIn demonstrating how you leveraged the tool.

Project requirements

How to access required tools

• Create a Free Edition account
• Familiarize yourself with Free Edition docs
• Consider using sample data like this for the demo:
  • Uber rides
  • Netflix movies
  • English Premier League stats
  • Car sales dataset
  • Or find your own on Kaggle

What to create

• AI applications and agents
  • Prepare and process data, experiment with foundation models, deploy and test AI systems, and evaluate models — all within a collaborative notebook workspace
• Data science and machine learning projects
  • Use shared notebooks for real-time collaboration, build ML models and publish results
• Data exploration and analysis
  • Import real datasets, run SQL queries, visualize results and build hands-on experience in analyzing real data
• Interactive dashboards
  • Create dashboards and visualizations interactively using tools like AI/BI Genie and natural-language prompts
• Data pipelines
  • Use serverless tools such as Lakeflow to design, ingest, transform and orchestrate data pipelines for ETL (extract, transform, load) workflows
• Hands-on coding help
  • Get coding assistance from Databricks Assistant directly within notebooks, including code suggestions and explanations

Limitations

• Only serverless, small compute clusters — no custom clusters or GPUs
• Limited to Python and SQL (no R or Scala)
• Not for commercial/enterprise use
• Learn more about the limitations of Free Edition

What to submit

Submissions to the Databricks Free Edition Hackathon must meet the following requirements, as applicable:

• Include a project built with Free Edition
• Include a text description that explains the features and functionality of your project
• Provide links to your LinkedIn and Reddit posts and video links showing your five-minute demo

Prizes

Prizes will be awarded to all participants in the form of a virtual Visa gift card.

• 1st place — $1,000 USD virtual Visa gift card
• 2nd place — $500 USD virtual Visa gift card
• 3rd place — $250 USD virtual Visa gift card

Winners will be notified and emailed with instructions on how to claim their prizes on or around November 30, 2025.

Need help?

Join Databricks Community for help. The group will be staffed with Databricks personnel through the submission window to help answer your questions.

Please carefully review the Official Rules prior to participating in this hackathon to ensure you understand and agree. If there is a conflict between the Official Rules and any other document describing this hackathon, the Official Rules control.