Olga Braginskaya

Posted on Feb 24 • Originally published at datobra.com on Feb 23

Who Wins Dev.to Challenges? (And The Hidden Benefits No One Talks About)

#blogging #beginners #devchallenge

At the beginning of this year I made a decision - I was going to participate in every Dev.to challenge. Well, almost every challenge. Let’s be honest, frontend isn’t my thing, so I happily skipped those. But everything else? Fair game.

Why? Because after writing on Dev.to for a while I started noticing something interesting - challenge articles get way more engagement than regular posts. More comments, more reactions, more visibility. And that made me wonder: what’s the real value of these challenges?

So far we’ve had enough challenges this year to start digging into that question. I manually collected data on the past winners, analyzed who they are, and compared their activity levels. But even if you don’t win there are hidden benefits no one talks about - opportunities that go beyond just a prize.

Let’s take a look at who actually wins these challenges and, more importantly, why participating is worth your time.

Who Really Wins Dev.to Challenges?

If you’ve been on Dev.to for a while, you’ve probably seen the Dev.to Challenges page - regularly updated competitions where writers and developers can submit articles and projects on a specific topic. Sometimes they’re backed by big names like AWS, GitHub, or Cloudflare. Other times, they focus on open-source contributions, AI, or web development. And of course there’s always the Frontend Challenge (which, as you know, I gladly skipped).

Winners get prizes - swag, cash, or tech goodies - but I wanted to know more. Who are these winners? Are they Dev.to veterans, or can anyone win? Do they participate often or is it a one-time thing?

This isn’t my first time digging into Dev.to’s community. In my previous article, Who’s Really Following You on Dev.to? I analyzed my own followers, uncovering insights about their activity, engagement, and profile completeness. Now I’m applying the same approach to Dev.to challenge winners - manually collecting a list of them, analyzing their activity, and figuring out what sets them apart.

Here’s what I discovered.

If you don’t want to read the analysis, you can skip it and go straight to the Jupyter notebook to explore the data yourself or jump to "The Prizes Are Nice But the Real Rewards Are Unexpected".

I’m not going to dive too deep into how I gathered this data - I used the Forem API, the GitHub API, and a bit of web scraping to collect information on challenge winners. In total I identified 81 winners. If you're curious, you can find all the code in my repo.

Let’s start with the first big question.

Are there people who have won more than one Dev.to challenge?

Seven people managed to win two challenges, showing that some participants keep finding ways to succeed.

Where Are the Winners From?

Winners come from diverse locations, with India having the highest count at 4. However, the numbers are fairly evenly spread, suggesting no single country dominates Dev.to challenges or winners didn't provide their location in the dev.to profile.

How Active Are Winners on Dev.to?

To answer this, I categorized winners into three groups based on their activity and profile details:

Active Contributors - Winners who have written at least two meaningful articles (longer than one minute of reading time) or have left more than two comments.
Connected Profiles - Users who haven’t written much on Dev.to (less than two long-form articles) but have linked external accounts like GitHub, Twitter, or a personal website.
Basic Profiles - Users with minimal profile details, like a location or a short bio, but no significant engagement.

Most of the winners fall into the Active Contributors category. This means challenge winners aren’t just random participants - they’re active members of the Dev.to community who share knowledge and engage with others.

How Many Challenges Do Winners Enter?

To find out, I analyzed how many times each winner submitted an article to a Dev.to challenge. By looking at the #devchallenge tag, we can count their total participations and compare that to their actual wins.

Most winners joined 2 to 3 challenges, while others entered 4 to 6, and some took part in 7 or more. Many winners continue participating beyond a single challenge. While more entries can increase the chances of winning, some succeeded with just one, proving that persistence isn’t always necessary - strong submissions can win on their own.

The chart below shows that many winners participated in multiple challenges, while others succeeded with fewer attempts.

Are Winners Regular Dev.to Contributors?

I wanted to see whether winners engage with Dev.to beyond competitions. To do that, I looked at the ratio of regular articles to challenge articles - are winners primarily challenge participants, or do they contribute consistently to the platform?

The data shows that some winners mainly post challenge-related articles, while others contribute more broadly. A few are especially active, regularly publishing non-challenge content. To get a better picture of winner engagement, I broke down their articles into three categories:

Regular articles
Challenge submissions that didn’t win
Winning challenge submissions

The contrast is clear - some winners are highly active outside of competitions, while others mainly post challenge-related content.

How Often Do Winners Publish?

Do winners post consistently, or are their articles more spread out? To find out, I calculated the average time between their articles and grouped them into different publishing frequency categories.

Most winners publish at least once a month, with the largest group posting every 1-3 months. Some winners publish only a few times a year or even take over a year between articles.

How Long Does It Take to Win?

Winning a Dev.to challenge isn’t the same experience for everyone. Some participants win right away, while others need more time or multiple attempts. I looked at this from two perspectives:

Time Perspective - How long does it take from the first challenge submission to the first win?
Attempts Perspective - How many submissions does it take before securing a win?

Most winners succeed on their first attempt, whether we measure by time or the number of submissions. However, some take weeks or multiple tries before winning. This suggests that while some submissions stand out immediately, others take time to get noticed. Winning isn’t necessarily about frequent participation - it’s about finding the right challenge and making a strong submission at the right moment.

Do Dev.to Challenges Boost Engagement?

One common question is whether participating in Dev.to challenges helps boost engagement. Do challenge articles get more likes and comments, or do regular blog posts perform just as well?

To compare, I looked at the average number of reactions and comments for challenge articles versus regular posts.

The results are telling - challenge submissions tend to get more engagement. This could be due to:

The extra visibility challenges bring, as people actively browse and discuss submissions.
The community aspect, where participants read and support each other’s work.

Whether you win or not, participating in Dev.to challenges can significantly boost engagement and expand your audience.

How Active Are Winners on GitHub?

After looking at their activity on Dev.to I wanted to see how active these winners are on GitHub. Since many Dev.to challenges focus on coding and development, it made sense to check whether winners are also regular contributors on GitHub.

To assess how active Dev.to challenge winners are on GitHub, I retrieved their GitHub profiles for those who had this information in their profiles and analyzed their repository count and last activity date.

Each winner was categorized into one of three groups:

Active – They have more than two public repositories and have updated their GitHub profile at least once since it was created.
Non-Active – They have a GitHub account but minimal or no public contributions.
None – No GitHub account was found for them.

The chart shows that most winners are active on GitHub, either maintaining projects or contributing to others. A few have accounts with little activity, while others either deleted their accounts or provided invalid usernames.

Let's check the locations listed in GitHub profiles.

How Many Public Repositories Do Winners Have?

Winning a Dev.to challenge doesn’t necessarily mean someone is an active coder, but I was curious - how many public repositories do winners actually have? Are they maintaining multiple projects, contributing to open-source, or just keeping a low profile on GitHub?

To find out, I analyzed the number of public repositories for each winner and grouped them into categories. The results show a wide range - some winners have no public repos at all, while others manage over 200 repositories.

Most winners fall into the 1-49 repos range, meaning they’re at least somewhat active on GitHub. A smaller but significant group maintains 50+ repositories, suggesting a high level of coding activity. And then there are the super contributors - a handful of winners with 200 or more public repositories, indicating deep involvement in open-source projects or extensive personal work.

This distribution shows that while many Dev.to challenge winners actively engage with coding and project maintenance, there’s no strict requirement - some succeed without having a strong GitHub presence at all.

Who’s the Most Famous Dev.to Challenge Winner on GitHub?

Alright, let’s wrap this up with a little leaderboard of GitHub fame. Some Dev.to challenge winners have built a serious following on GitHub, with thousands of developers watching their every commit. Others? Well, they’re just vibing with a small but mighty audience.

Is there a connection between Dev.to wins and GitHub stardom? Not really. But hey, if you ever wanted to flex your follower count in a Dev.to challenge, now you have a benchmark.

If you made it this far, congrats - you now know more about Dev.to challenge winners than anyone probably should. 🎉

The Prizes Are Nice But the Real Rewards Are Unexpected

Winning a Dev.to challenge comes with some cool perks - stickers, swag, sometimes even cash. But here’s the thing: the real value of participating goes way beyond the prize. Even if you don’t win, you still gain something valuable - more engagement on your posts, exposure to new technologies, fresh ideas for future articles, and sometimes even recognition outside of Dev.to.

Let’s break down these unexpected rewards and why they might be even better than the prize itself.

1. More Engagement, More Visibility

If you’ve ever written on Dev.to you know that not every article gets the same level of attention. But challenge submissions? They stand out. They get more reactions, comments, and shares than the average post.

Why?

Challenges create a buzz. People actively look for submissions, engage with them, and discuss different approaches.
Sponsors often promote them. Some challenges are backed by companies that highlight articles in newsletters or social media.
Readers love structured content. Challenge articles follow a theme, making them easier to find and more relevant to certain audiences.

I noticed this trend with my own posts - my challenge submissions consistently outperformed regular articles in terms of engagement. Challenge articles like Binary Tree, Log’s Don’t Lie, NameWiz, BlogAI, and Data Analytics Dashboard Starter Kit weren’t promoted on external platforms—no social media shares, no external newsletters, just Dev.to traffic. Yet, they still brought in a significant number of new followers. If you’re looking to grow your audience, joining a challenge is an easy way to get more eyes on your work.

2. Learning New Technologies Without the Pressure

One of the best things about Dev.to challenges is that they push you to explore tools and frameworks you wouldn’t normally try.

I’ll admit, I wasn’t particularly interested in Neon or Streamlit before I participated in the challenges. But after working on my submissions, I ended up loving both - so much that I now use them regularly.

Challenges give you a reason to experiment without the pressure of a real-world project. Instead of learning something new just for the sake of it, you get to apply it, build something, and share your experience - which makes the learning process much more enjoyable (and useful).

3. Endless Inspiration for New Articles

Every Dev.to writer has been there - you want to write something, but you’re not sure what. Challenges fix that problem instantly.

They give you a prompt so you don’t have to come up with a topic from scratch.
They force you to think creatively - how can you approach the topic in a unique way?
They lead to even more ideas - for example, after participating in the Agent.AI Challenge, I got an idea for a new blog post that I’m actively working on right now.

Even if you don’t win, you still walk away with something valuable: a published article, more ideas, and a better understanding of the topic.

Sometimes, challenge articles don’t just stay on Dev.to - they travel.

My Github Copilot challenge article made it into Streamlit’s January Roundup on LinkedIn.
Some sponsors highlight standout submissions on their own platforms.
A well-written challenge entry can end up in newsletters, Twitter threads, or tech communities.

You might enter thinking it’s just another Dev.to post, but it could end up bringing opportunities you didn’t expect.

Go Join a Challenge! (Seriously, You Won’t Regret It)

Yes, prizes are fun. But after participating in multiple challenges, I’ve realized that the long-term rewards are much bigger. More visibility, new skills, fresh content ideas, and unexpected recognition - these are the things that stick with you long after the challenge ends.

And the best part? You don’t even have to win to benefit from them.