dev-tools 4 min read

Trophy - Drop-in gamification API for consumer apps

Trophy gives your app achievements, streaks, points, and leaderboards in a sprint. No in-house build required — achievements, leaderboards, and points as an API call.

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TL;DR

TL;DR: Trophy is a B2B SaaS API that adds achievements, streaks, points, and leaderboards to consumer apps via SDK — no custom gamification infrastructure needed.

What Is Trophy?

Trophy is modern gamification software for consumer apps. It provides drop-in features — achievements, streaks, points, and leaderboards — that you can ship in a single sprint without building gamification infrastructure in-house.

Instead of designing, building, and maintaining a custom reward system, you call the Trophy API. The platform handles the logic, storage, and scaling of all gamification primitives.

Source and Accuracy Notes

⚠️ This section is MANDATORY. All links must be verified from actual source, not guessed.

  • Project page: trophy.so — verified
  • Source repository: github.com/trophyso — verified (SDK repos public)
  • License: Proprietary SaaS (free tier available; source SDKs MIT on GitHub)
  • HN launch thread: Not available for this product

Core Features

Achievements

Define achievements with metric triggers. Achievements unlock when users hit thresholds you set:

achievements.create({
  name: "First Sale",
  description: "Completed your first transaction",
  icon: "trophy",
  triggers: [
    { metric: "transactions-completed", threshold: 1 }
  ]
});

Points and Points Systems

Create custom points currencies tied to user actions:

points.create({
  name: "FitPoints",
  triggers: [
    { metric: "workouts-completed", threshold: 1, points: 10 }
  ]
});

Streaks

Encourage daily engagement with configurable streak logic:

streaks.create({
  name: "Daily Login",
  key: "login-streak",
  unit: "day",
  interval: 1,
  startOn: "manual",
});

Leaderboards

Rank users by points across configurable time windows:

leaderboards.create({
  name: "Weekly Movers",
  pointsSystemId: "uuid-here",
  runUnit: "day",
  runInterval: 7,
});

SDK Support

Trophy publishes SDKs for common stacks. The TypeScript/JavaScript SDK covers Node.js and browser environments:

npm install @trophy/sdk

Security and Privacy

The platform ships with privacy-first defaults:

  • Encryption in transit (TLS 1.2+) and at rest (AES-256)
  • Scoped API keys with rotation and revocation
  • No PII collected by default
  • Fault-tolerant, idempotent API design

Pricing

Trophy offers a free tier with usage-based pricing beyond that. From the pricing page:

  • Free — includes core gamification primitives
  • Usage-based — scales with MAUs and API calls

API-First Architecture

Trophy is designed as a pure API layer. You own the frontend and user experience; Trophy manages the gamification state. This gives you control over how streaks, achievements, and leaderboards look and feel while offloading the backend complexity.

The SDK is available for TypeScript/JavaScript, with REST API access for other environments.

FAQ

Q: Does Trophy handle the UI for achievements? A: No. Trophy provides the data layer and game logic — achievements, points, streaks, leaderboards. You build the UI that displays them. This gives full control over the visual design and user experience.

Q: Can I use Trophy with React Native or mobile apps? A: Yes, the REST API works from any environment that can make HTTP calls. Native mobile SDKs are on the roadmap per the docs.

Q: What happens if a user resets their data? A: Trophy stores gamification state server-side. You can reset individual user state via the API if needed.

Q: Is there a test/sandbox environment? A: The free tier includes access to the full API surface. Check the dashboard for sandbox vs production key separation.

Conclusion

Trophy solves a specific problem: consumer apps want engagement mechanics (streaks, achievements, leaderboards) but building them properly is a significant backend project. Instead of rolling your own, you call an API and get proven gamification primitives that scale.

If your app needs retention mechanics and you want to ship them fast, Trophy is worth evaluating.

Source: trophy.so