Completing Python projects is the ultimate learning tool for beginners. You'll learn faster, retain more information, and consistently keep motivation high.
Here's a list of over 50 incredible Python projects you can try yourself or use as inspiration. There are projects for beginner, intermediate, and advanced learners.
Before You Build Your First Python Project
If you have some programming experience, you might be able to dive straight into building a Python project. However, If you’re just starting out, it’s important you learn Python basics first. We recommend our beginner Python for web development course here or our beginner Python for data course here.
The idea is to learn the basics as quickly as possible so you can start doing things that are actually fun, like Python projects!
At Dataquest, we include guided projects in virtually every course. That way, you can implement what you learn immediately. Check out our full list of courses here. Getting started is free!
Beginner Python Project Examples
Now, let’s look at a few Python project examples. See if you can find one that piques your interest.
Guided Python Projects to Help Build Your Portfolio (Recommended):
These are Dataquest's guided projects, which are recommended for beginners. They provide the curriculum needed to complete the project, along with structure in case you get stuck.
The links below will take you to the course that contains the project you're looking for. Enroll today for free!
Building an Interactive Game — In this guided project, you’ll use basic Python programming concepts to create a functional and interactive word-guessing game.
Building a Food Ordering App — Create a functional and interactive food ordering application using Python.
Profitable App Profiles for the App Store and Google Play Markets — In this guided project, you’ll work as a data analyst for a company that builds mobile apps. You’ll use Python to provide value through practical data analysis.
Exploring Hacker News Posts — Work with a dataset of submissions to Hacker News, a popular technology site.
Exploring eBay Car Sales Data — Use Python to work with a scraped dataset of used cars from eBay Kleinanzeigen, a classifieds section of the German eBay website.
Finding Heavy Traffic Indicators on I-94 — Explore how using the pandas plotting functionality along with the Jupyter Notebook interface allows us to explore data quickly using visualizations.
Storytelling Data Visualization on Exchange Rates — Quickly create multiple subsetted plots using one or more conditions.
Clean and Analyze Employee Exit Surveys — Work with exit surveys from employees of the Department of Education in Queensland, Australia. Play the role of a data analyst and pretend the stakeholders want answers to important data questions.
Star Wars Survey — In this data cleaning project, you’ll work with Jupyter Notebook to analyze data on the Star Wars movies.
Analyzing NYC High School Data — Discover the SAT performance of different demographics using scatter plots and maps.
Predicting the Weather Using Machine Learning — This machine learning project will help you prepare data, work with time series data, measure error, and improve your model performance.
Predicting Car Prices — Practice the machine learning workflow using k-nearest neighbors to predict car prices.
Fun Python Projects for Building Data Skills:
Find out How Much Money You’ve Spent on Amazon — Dig into your own spending habits with this beginner-level tutorial!
Analyze Your Own Netflix Data — Another beginner-to-intermediate tutorial that gets you working with your own personal dataset.
Analyze Your Personal Facebook Posting Habits — Are you spending too much time posting on Facebook? The numbers don’t lie, and you can find them in this beginner-to-intermediate Python project.
Analyze Survey Data — This walk-through will show you how to set up Python and how to filter survey data from any dataset (or just use the sample data linked in the article).
Dataquest’s Guided Projects — These guided data science projects walk you through building real-world data projects of increasing complexity, with suggestions for how to expand each project.
Analyze Everything — Grab a free dataset that interests you, and start poking around! If you get stuck or aren’t sure where to start, our Python courses are here to help, and you can try them for free!
Cool Python Projects for Game Devs:
Rock, Paper, Scissors — Learn Python with a simple-but-fun game that everybody knows.
Build a Text Adventure Game — This is a classic Python beginner project (it also pops up in this book) that’ll teach you many basic game setup concepts that are useful for more advanced games.
Guessing Game — This is another beginner-level project that’ll help you learn and practice the basics.
Mad Libs — Use Python code to make interactive Python Mad Libs!
Hangman — Another childhood classic that you can make to stretch your Python skills.
Snake — This is a bit more complex, but it’s a classic (and surprisingly fun) game to make and play.
Simple Python Projects for Beginner Web Devs:
URL shortener — This free video course will show you how to build your own URL shortener like Bit.ly using Python and Django.
Build a Simple Web Page with Django — This is a very in-depth, from-scratch tutorial for building a website with Python and Django that even has cartoon illustrations!
Easy Python Projects for Aspiring Developers:
Password generator — Build a secure password generator in Python.
Use Tweepy to create a Twitter bot — This Python project idea is a bit more advanced, as you’ll need to use the Twitter API, but it’s definitely fun!
Build an Address Book — This could start with a simple Python dictionary or become as advanced as something like this!
Create a Crypto App with Python — This free video course walks you through using some APIs and using Python to build apps with cryptocurrency data.
See AlsoPCEP
Additional Python Project Ideas
Still haven’t found a Python project idea that appeals to you? Here are many more, separated by experience level.
These aren’t tutorials; they’re ideas that you’ll have to dig into and research on your own, but that’s part of the fun! And it’s part of the natural process of learning to code and working as a programmer.
The pros use Google for answersall the time— so don’t be afraid to dive in and get your hands dirty!
Python Project Ideas: Beginner Level
Create a code generator. This can that take text as input, replaces each letter with another letter, and outputs the “encoded” message.
Build a countdown calculator. Write some code that can take two dates as input, and then calculate the amount of time between them. This will be a great way to familiarize yourself with Python’s datetime module.
Write a sorting method. Given a list, can you write some code that sorts it alphabetically, or numerically? Yes, Python has this functionality built-in, but see if you can do it without using sort()!
Build an interactive quiz application. Which Avenger are you? Build a personality or recommendation quiz that asks users some questions, stores their answers, and then performs some kind of calculation to give the user a personalized result based on their answers
Tic-Tac-Toe by Text.Build a Tic-Tac-Toe game that’s playable like a text adventure. Can you make it print a text-based representation of the board after each move?
Make a temperature/measurement converter. Write a script that can convert Fahrenheit to Celcius and back, or inches to centimeters and back, etc. How far can you take it?
Build a counter app. Take your first steps into the world of UI by building a very simple app that counts up by one each time a user clicks a button.
Build a number-guessing game. Think of this as a bit like a text adventure, but with numbers. How far can you take it?
Build an alarm clock. This is borderline beginner/intermediate, but it’s worth trying to build an alarm clock for yourself. Can you create different alarms? A snooze function?
Python Project Ideas: Intermediate Level
Build an upgraded code generator. Starting with the project mentioned in the beginner section, see what you can do to make it more sophisticated. Can you make it generate different kinds of codes? Can you create a “decoder” app that reads encoded messages if the user inputs a secret key? Can you create a more sophisticated code that goes beyond simple letter-replacement?
Make your Tic-Tac-Toe game clickable. Building off the beginner project, now make a version of Tic-Tac-Toe that has an actual UI you’ll use by clicking on open squares. Challenge: can you write a simple “AI” opponent for a human player to play against?
Scrape some data to analyze. This could really be anything, from any website you like. The web is full of interesting data, and if you learn a little about web-scraping, you can collect some really unique datasets.
Build a clock website. How close can you get it to real-time? Can you implement different time zone selectors, and add in the “countdown calculator” functionality to calculate lengths of time?
Automate some of your job.This will vary, but many jobs have some kind of repetitive process that you can automate! This intermediate project could even lead to a promotion.
Automate your personal habits. Do you want to remember to stand up once every hour during work? How about writing some code that generates unique workout plans based on your goals and preferences? There are a variety of simple apps you can build for yourself to automate or enhance different aspects of your life.
Create a simple web browser. Build a simple UI that accepts URLs and loads webpages. PyWt will be helpful here! Can you add a “back” button, bookmarks, and other cool features?
Write a notes app. Create an app that helps people write and store notes. Can you think of some interesting and unique features to add?
Build a typing tester. This should show the user some text, and then challenge them to type it — while timing them and scoring them on for accuracy.
Create a “site updated” notification system. Ever get annoyed when you have to refresh a website to see if an out-of-stock product has been relisted, or to see if any news has been posted? Write a Python script that automatically checks a given URL for updates and informs you when it identifies one. (Be careful not to overload the servers of whatever site you’re checking, though — keep the time interval reasonable between each check).
Recreate your favorite board game in Python. There are tons of options here, from something simple like Checkers all the way up to Risk — or even more modern and advanced games like Ticket to Ride or Settlers of Catan. How close can you get to the real thing?
Build a Wikipedia explorer. Build an app that displays a random Wikipedia page. The challenge here is in the details: can you add user-selected categories? Can you try a different “rabbit hole” version of the app, wherein each article is randomly selected from the articles linked in the previous article? This might seem simple, but it can actually require some serious web-scraping skills.
Python Project Ideas: Advanced Level
Build a stock market prediction app. For this one, you’ll need a source of stock market data and some machine learning and data analytics skills, but many people have tried this, so there’s plenty of source code out there to work from.
Build a chatbot.The challenge here isn’t so much making the chatbot as it is making itgood. Can you, for example, implement some natural language processing techniques to make it sound more natural and spontaneous?
Program a robot. This requires some hardware (which isn’t usually free), but there are many affordable options out there — and many learning resources, too. Definitely look into Raspberry Pi if you’re not already thinking along those lines.
Build an image recognition app. Starting with handwriting recognition is a good idea — Dataquest even has a guided data science project to help with that! — but once you’ve learned it, you can take it to the next level.
Create a sentiment analysis tool for social media. Collect data from various social media platforms, preprocess it, and then train a deep learning model to analyze the sentiment of each post (positive, negative, neutral).
Make a price prediction model. Select an industry or product that interests you, and build a machine learning model that predicts price changes.
Create an interactive map. This will require a mix of data skills and UI creation skills. Your map can display whatever you’d like — bird migrations, traffic data, crime reports — but it should be interactive in some way. How far can you take it?
Next Steps
Each of the examples in the previous section built on the practice of choosing a great Python project for beginners. Next, you can advance to the following:
Think about what interests you, and choose a project that overlaps with your interests.
Think about your Python learning goals, and make sure your project moves you closer to achieving those goals.
Start small. Once you’ve built a small project, you can either expand it or build another one.
Now you’re ready to get started. If you haven’t learned the basics of Python yet, I recommend diving in with Dataquest’s Python Fundamentals course.
If you already know the basics, there’s no reason to hesitate! Now is the time to dive in and find your perfect Python project.
