88 Python Projects from Beginner to Advanced (2026)

Here’s a list of Python projects from beginner to advanced, designed to help you practice your skills, build real projects, and learn faster.

Table of Contents

• Beginner Python Projects
  • Guided Beginner Projects
  • Cool and Fun Projects for Beginners
  • Beginner Python Project Ideas
• Intermediate Python Projects
  • Guided Intermediate Projects
  • Projects for Intermediate Learners
  • Intermediate Python Project Ideas
• Advanced Python Projects
  • Guided Advanced Projects
  • Challenging Python Projects to Build
  • Advanced Python Project Ideas

Beginner Python Projects

These Python projects for beginners are perfect for getting started. They require little to no prior experience and are designed to help you build confidence as you learn the fundamentals.

Guided Beginner Projects

If you're just getting started, these beginner Dataquest Guided Projects are an easy entry point. They walk you through each step, so you're not stuck wondering what to do next. You'll get hands-on practice using an in-browser code editor, along with clear instructions and built-in support if you run into issues.

1. Building an Interactive Word Game — Build a fully functional word-guessing game using core Python concepts. It's a great first project.
2. Profitable App Profiles for the App Store and Google Play Markets — Work as a data analyst for a company that builds mobile apps. You'll use Python to analyze real app market data to find app profiles that attract the most users.
3. Exploring Hacker News Posts — Use Python string manipulation, OOP, and date handling to analyze trends driving post popularity on Hacker News, a popular technology site. This is a good Python project for beginners.
4. 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.
5. Building a Text-Based Garden Simulator — Build an interactive game where players plant, tend, and harvest virtual crops. You'll put object-oriented programming, error handling, and randomness to work to bring the world to life.
6. Star Wars Survey (PREMIUM) — In this beginner data cleaning project, you'll work with Jupyter Notebook to analyze data on the Star Wars movies to answer the hotly contested question, "Who shot first?"
7. Analyzing NYC High School Data (PREMIUM) — Assume the role of a data scientist analyzing relationships between SAT scores and demographic factors in NYC public schools to determine if the SAT is a fair test.
8. Predicting the Weather Using Machine Learning (PREMIUM) — Step into the role of a data scientist to predict tomorrow's weather using historical data and machine learning, developing skills in data preparation, time series analysis, and model evaluation.

Cool and Fun Projects for Beginners

9. Find out How Much Money You've Spent on Amazon — Dig into your own spending habits with this beginner-level tutorial!
10. Analyze Your Personal Netflix Data — Another beginner-to-intermediate tutorial that gets you working with your own personal dataset.
11. 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).
12. Rock, Paper, Scissors — Learn Python with a simple-but-fun game that everybody knows.
13. 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.
14. Guessing Game — This will help you learn and practice the basics.
15. Mad Libs — Use Python code to make interactive Python Mad Libs!
16. Building a Calculator App — Create a calculator with buttons and a display. This easy project helps you practice event handling and basic UI design.
17. Building a To-Do List App — Create a GUI app where users can add, edit, and delete tasks. This beginner project introduces interactive interfaces and state management.
18. Password generator — Build a secure password generator in Python.
19. Build an Address Book — This could start with a simple Python dictionary or become as advanced as you'd like!
20. Automating File Organization — Use Python to automatically sort files into folders based on type, name, or date. It's a great Python project for beginners.
21. File Search Tool — Create a tool that searches your computer for files based on name or type. This project helps you work with directories and file traversal in Python.
22. 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 introduction to Python lessons are here to help, and you can try them for free!

Beginner Python Project Ideas

23. Create a text encryption generator. This would take text as input, replaces each letter with another letter, and outputs the "encoded" message.
24. 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.
25. 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 try to do it without using the sort() function!
26. 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.
27. 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?
28. Make a temperature/measurement converter. Write a script that can convert Fahrenheit (℉) to Celsius (℃) and back, or inches to centimeters and back, etc. How far can you take it?
29. 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.
30. Build a number-guessing game. Think of this as a bit like a text adventure, but with numbers. How would you add a "Get a Hint" option?
31. 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?

Intermediate Python Projects

If you already have a solid grasp of the basics, these Python projects will help you expand your skills and tackle more complex concepts.

Guided Intermediate Projects

Once you're comfortable with the basics, these intermediate Dataquest Guided Projects help you level up. They still provide structure and guidance, but expect you to think more independently as you work through real-world scenarios and more complex datasets.

32. Predicting Heart Disease — Use a UCI heart disease dataset to build a model that predicts patient risk. A compelling project that shows real-world ML impact.
33. Analyzing Accuracy in Data Presentation — Step into the role of data journalists to analyze movie ratings data and determine if there's evidence of bias in Fandango's rating system.
34. Finding Heavy Traffic Indicators on I-94 — Explore how using the pandas plotting functionality along with the Jupyter Notebook interface allows us to analyze data quickly using visualizations to determine indicators of heavy traffic.
35. 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 to analyze employee exit surveys and uncover insights about why employees resign.
36. Credit Card Customer Segmentation — Play the role of a data scientist at a credit card company to segment customers into groups using K-means clustering in Python, allowing the company to tailor strategies for each segment.
37. Developing a Dynamic AI Chatbot — Create your very own AI-powered chatbot that can take on different personalities, keep track of conversation history, and provide coherent responses.
38. Building a Food Ordering App — Create a functional application using Python dictionaries, loops, and functions to create an interactive system for viewing menus, modifying carts, and placing orders.
39. Storytelling Data Visualization on Exchange Rates (PREMIUM) — Assume the role of a data analyst tasked with creating an explanatory data visualization about Euro exchange rates to inform and engage an audience.
40. Building an AI Chatbot with Streamlit (PREMIUM) — Build a simple website with an AI chatbot user interface similar to the OpenAI Playground using Streamlit.
41. Exploring Financial Data with an API (PREMIUM) — Learn how to send API requests in Python, handle JSON responses, and turn them into usable datasets. You'll use pandas to explore and visualize financial data.
42. Building a Data Pipeline with APIs (PREMIUM) — Work as a data engineer to build a pipeline that collects and stores podcast data using Python and Airflow. This project introduces automation, database integration, and working with external data sources.
43. Automating Data Collection with Web Scraping (PREMIUM) — Automatically collect football match data from websites, then clean and combine it for analysis.

Projects for Intermediate Learners

44. Hangman — Another childhood classic that you can make to stretch your Python skills.
45. Snake — This is a bit more complex, but it's a classic (and surprisingly fun) game to make and play.
46. URL shortener — This free video course will show you how to build your own URL shortener like Bit.ly using Python and Django.
47. Build a Simple Web Page with Django — This is a very in-depth, from-scratch tutorial for building a website with Python and Django, complete with cartoon illustrations!
48. Creating a Portfolio Backend with Python — Build the backend for a personal portfolio website using Python. You'll learn how to serve content, handle requests, and structure a web application.
49. Create a Crypto App with Python — This free video course walks you through using some APIs and Python to build apps with cryptocurrency data.
50. Use Python to build a Discord bot — This project is a bit more advanced because it introduces APIs, event-driven programming, and authentication, but it's a practical way to learn how Python interacts with real users and messages.
51. Building a Notes App — Build a desktop notes app with a graphical interface for writing and saving text. This project combines UI design with file handling.
52. Building a Text Editor — Create a simple text editor with features like open, edit, and save. This project helps you understand UI components and file operations.
53. Analyze Your Personal Facebook Data with Python — 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.
54. Sending Automated Emails — Build a Python script that sends emails automatically using SMTP. This project introduces working with external services, scheduling tasks, and automating communication.
55. Building a Weather App with an API — Use Python to fetch real-time weather data from an API and display it in a simple app. This project helps you practice sending requests, handling JSON responses, and working with external data.
56. Automating File Backups — Create a script that automatically backs up important files and folders. This project introduces reliability and data safety.

Intermediate Python Project Ideas

57. Build an upgraded text encryption 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?
58. 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?
59. Scrape some data to analyze. This could really be anything, from any website you like. The web is full of interesting data. If you learn a little about web-scraping, you can collect some really unique datasets.
60. Build a clock website. How close can you get it to real-time? Can you implement different time zone selectors, and add a "countdown calculator" functionality to calculate lengths of time?
61. 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.
62. 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 to automate or enhance different aspects of your life.
63. Create a simple web browser. Build a simple UI that accepts URLs and loads webpages. PyQt will be helpful here! Can you add a "back" button, bookmarks, and other cool features?
64. 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?
65. Build a typing tester. This should show the user some text, and then challenge them to type it quickly and accurately. Meanwhile, you time them and score them on accuracy.
66. 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.
67. 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?
68. 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.

Advanced Python Projects

Ready to push yourself further? These advanced Python projects are designed to challenge your abilities, accelerate your growth, and deepen your expertise in Python.

Guided Advanced Projects

If you've got the fundamentals locked in and you're ready to tackle harder problems, these advanced Dataquest Guided Projects push you into territory like deep learning, NLP, data structures, and parallel computing. They still give you structure, but they assume you can think through complex design decisions and iterate on your own.

69. Analyzing Wikipedia Pages — Build a simplified grep utility that searches over 54 MB of Wikipedia articles, using Python's multiprocessing library and the MapReduce framework to get hands-on experience with parallel computing and big data processing.
70. Implementing a Key-Value Database (PREMIUM) — Extend a B-tree implementation into a fully functional key-value database that supports range queries and dictionary-like syntax. You'll apply object-oriented programming principles, override methods, and write tests to verify correctness and performance.
71. Building A Handwritten Digits Classifier (PREMIUM) — Build an image classifier that recognizes handwritten digits, comparing k-nearest neighbors to neural networks with one, two, and three hidden layers to see how architecture affects accuracy.
72. Detect Pneumonia Using X-Ray Images with CNNs and Transfer Learning (PREMIUM) — Act as a deep learning engineer developing models to help hospitals diagnose pneumonia in children from chest X-rays. You'll build convolutional neural networks from scratch with Keras, then apply transfer learning with pre-trained models to boost performance on a real-world medical imaging task.
73. Build a Speech Recognition and Summarization System (PREMIUM) — Combine the Vosk speech-to-text library with Hugging Face summarization models to build a portfolio-ready system that automatically transcribes and summarizes audio files like lecture notes, podcasts, and videos.

Challenging Python Projects to Build

74. Building a User Authentication System — Build a login and registration system using Python, handling user authentication and sessions. This project introduces security basics and user management in web apps.
75. Building a Log Analyzer — Build a script that reads system or application logs and extracts useful insights. This project introduces parsing and data processing.
76. Automating Screenshot Capture — Create a script that takes screenshots automatically at intervals. This project introduces automation and working with OS-level tools.

Advanced Python Project Ideas

77. 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. Fortunately, many people have tried this, so there's plenty of source code out there to work from.
78. Build a chatbot. The challenge here isn't so much making the chatbot as it is making it good. Can you, for example, implement some natural language processing techniques to make it sound more natural and spontaneous?
79. 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.
80. Build an image recognition app. Once you've got handwriting recognition down, try extending to multi-class object recognition, facial detection, or real-time classification from a webcam feed. Can you get your model to perform well on images in the wild, outside of a clean training dataset?
81. 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).
82. Make a price prediction model. Select an industry or product that interests you, and build a machine learning model that predicts price changes.
83. 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?
84. Build a recommendation system. Create a system that suggests products, movies, or content based on user behavior. This project introduces collaborative filtering, similarity metrics, and real-world personalization techniques.
85. Create a real-time chat application. Build a chat app using Python that supports multiple users communicating in real time. This project helps you work with sockets, concurrency, and message handling.
86. Build a distributed web crawler. Create a system that crawls multiple websites and collects data efficiently. This project introduces concurrency, task scheduling, and handling large-scale data collection.
87. Develop a reinforcement learning agent. Train an agent to solve a problem (like playing a game) using reinforcement learning techniques. This project helps you understand decision-making models and reward systems.
88. Build a full-stack web app with authentication and APIs. Create a complete application with a backend, database, authentication system, and API endpoints. This project combines multiple advanced concepts into one real-world system.

Next Steps

Each of the examples in the previous sections built on the idea of choosing a great Python project for a beginner and then enhancing it as your Python skills progress. Next, you can advance to the following:

• Think about what interests you, and choose a project that aligns with them.
• Think about your Python learning goals, and make sure your project moves you closer to them.
• 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, we recommend starting with our Introduction to Python Programming course.

If you already know the basics, there's no reason to hesitate! Now is the time to get in there and find your perfect Python project.