Free judging criteria builder
Start from example hackathon, game jam or pitch competition criteria, adjust the weights, and hand your judges a rubric they cannot misread.
Example judging criteria
The four templates the builder starts from, written out in full. Use them as they are or as a starting point for your own rubric.
Hackathon judging criteria
| Criterion | What judges are looking for | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Technical execution | How much of it actually works, and how well it is built. | 30% |
| Innovation | Solves the problem in a way we have not seen before. | 25% |
| Impact | Who this helps, how many of them, and how much. | 25% |
| Presentation | How clearly the team explained and demonstrated the work. | 20% |
Game jam judging criteria
| Criterion | What judges are looking for | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Fun | Is it actually enjoyable to play for a few minutes? | 30% |
| Theme interpretation | How well and how imaginatively it uses the jam theme. | 25% |
| Originality | A mechanic or an idea we have not played before. | 25% |
| Presentation | Art, audio and polish, judged against the time available. | 20% |
Pitch competition judging criteria
| Criterion | What judges are looking for | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Problem and market | Is this a real problem, and do enough people have it? | 25% |
| Solution | Does the product plausibly solve the problem it names? | 25% |
| Business model | How it makes money, and why that holds up. | 20% |
| Team | Why this team is the one to build it. | 15% |
| Pitch quality | Clarity, structure and command of the questions. | 15% |
Innovation day judging criteria
| Criterion | What judges are looking for | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Business value | What it is worth to the organisation if we ship it. | 30% |
| Feasibility | Could this realistically reach production from here? | 25% |
| Originality | Whether it goes beyond what is already on the roadmap. | 20% |
| Prototype quality | How much of the idea is working rather than described. | 15% |
| Presentation | How clearly the case was made. | 10% |
How weighted judging works
Each judge scores every project on every criterion, using the same scale. Each score is multiplied by that criterion's weight, and the weighted scores are added up.
Weighting is what stops a polished demo from beating a genuinely better project on presentation alone — you decide up front how much presentation is actually worth.
Publish the rubric before judging starts. Teams build towards what you tell them you are measuring, and judges who have seen the criteria in advance score far more consistently.
Writing criteria judges can actually apply
Keep it to four or five criteria. Past that, judges stop discriminating between them and everything drifts toward the middle of the scale.
Say what you are looking for, not just what the criterion is called. "Innovation" means five different things to five judges; "solves the problem in a way we have not seen before" means one.
Avoid criteria a judge cannot observe in a three-minute demo. If nobody can see it, it will be scored on vibes.
Questions
- What are good hackathon judging criteria?
- Most hackathons judge on four things: technical execution, innovation, impact and presentation, weighted about 30/25/25/20. The builder starts from exactly that, and the table above lays it out.
- How do I turn this into a judging score sheet?
- Download the CSV and open it in Excel or Google Sheets. You get one row per criterion with its weight and scale; add a column for each judge.
- Do the weights have to total 100?
- It is not enforced, but it makes scores far easier to explain. The builder shows your running total and can even them out for you.
- What scale should I use?
- A 1–5 scale is easiest for judges to hold in their heads. Wider scales feel more precise but mostly add noise.
- Is anything stored?
- No. Your rubric stays in your browser until you copy or download it.
Judging is the part that goes wrong
HackathonHost runs weighted rubrics live: judges score on their phones, scores normalise across panels, conflicts of interest are blocked, and the leaderboard updates as results come in.
Every tool here runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you type is sent to us or stored anywhere.