12 Original Gifts for Developers and IT People (No Mugs)

An original gift for a developer or IT person is an object or experience that teaches them something they don't already do at work: radio, electronics, a CTF. Here are 12 ideas, from €15 to a day-long workshop, and roughly half of them don't come from us. Each one says who it's for and what they need to use it.

For a selection sorted by profile, see our hacker gift ideas too.

Why the usual "geek" gifts fall flat

The best-selling gifts for IT people have one thing in common: they talk about the job instead of feeding it. The "It works on my machine" mug, the binary T-shirt and the keyboard-shortcut mouse mat are funny for a minute, then join the pile of previous gifts.

Three reasons:

• IT people already have their gear. Keyboard, monitor, headphones: they picked them themselves, often after hours of comparison. Your odds of getting it right are low.
• The job isn't a personality. A web developer doesn't necessarily want a reminder of work on 25 December.
• Curiosity, on the other hand, is universal. Almost every IT person has an area they've never explored: radio, electronics, hardware security. A gift that opens that door gets used for months.

What about a coworker or Secret Santa?

That's a slightly different case: you don't know the person well, the budget is often set around €20 or €30, and the gift gets opened in front of everyone. Avoid anything that needs a long project or special equipment. The best ideas on this list for a coworker are the pack of blank NFC cards (programmable with any NFC phone), the logic analyzer if they dabble in electronics, or a book. A short note explaining what the thing does avoids the awkward pause when it's unwrapped.

The 12 ideas at a glance

The 12 ideas below follow that logic. They're grouped by use: learning through play, kitting out the desk or lab, small budgets, and experiences.

Gifts to learn while having fun (SDR, NFC, puzzles)

1. An RTL-SDR radio receiver

An RTL-SDR is a USB stick that turns a computer into a radio receiver, from about 24 MHz to 1.7 GHz. On the first evening, you can watch aircraft on a map thanks to their ADS-B beacons (the position messages they broadcast continuously). Then come the neighbourhood weather sensors, satellites and radio amateurs.

• Who it's for: any curious IT person, no radio background needed.
• What they need: a computer. The software (SDR++, GQRX, rtl_433) is free and open source.
• Price: €60 from us, receive-only.

2. Blank NFC cards and an app

NFC is the contactless technology in transit cards and mobile payments. A pack of blank NFC cards lets you programme your own tags: start a playlist by tapping your phone, share the guest Wi-Fi, build a mini escape game for the kids.

• Who it's for: the IT person who likes home automation or small weekend projects.
• What they need: an NFC phone and a free app such as NFC Tools.
• Price: €14.90 for 15 cards, genuine NXP chips.

3. A physical CTF puzzle

A CTF is a game where you solve security puzzles to find a "flag". A physical CTF puzzle puts that challenge inside an object: a Bluetooth beacon broadcasting a secret, contactless tags hidden in a box. Our CTF puzzles have three honestly labelled levels, nothing to solder, and an official solution published 60 days after delivery.

• Who it's for: the IT person who loves riddles and logic games.
• What they need: a phone, then a computer for the advanced levels.
• Availability: waitlist, first puzzles planned for 2027. This year it's a gift to announce rather than wrap.

4. A book that tells a story, not a manual

The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll tells how an astronomer turned sysadmin tracked an intruder through his lab's network in the late 1980s. For an IT person, it's a detective novel in which they understand every technical detail.

• Who it's for: the big reader, or the one who "never has time" but reads on holiday.
• What they need: nothing.
• Where: any bookshop. We don't sell it.

Gifts for the desk and the lab

5. An 8-channel logic analyzer

A logic analyzer is a small USB box that records the digital signals between two chips and decodes them: you "read" a UART, I²C or SPI conversation (three common ways components talk to each other). It's the tool that moves a developer from software to hardware.

• Who it's for: the IT person with an Arduino or Raspberry Pi in a drawer.
• What they need: a computer and the free PulseView software.
• Price: €19.90 from us. For heavy professional use, Saleae analyzers cost a lot more but their software is excellent: they're the right pick if the budget allows.

6. A smart soldering iron

A small USB-C soldering iron such as the Pinecil, an open-source iron that heats up in seconds, makes a very good first iron for someone starting electronics. We don't sell it, and none of our products needs soldering, but it's a tool every home lab ends up with.

• Who it's for: the IT person starting to build electronics kits.
• What they need: a powerful enough USB-C power supply (check the manufacturer's recommended wattage) and a heat-resistant mat.

7. A Raspberry Pi for a specific project

A Raspberry Pi is a computer the size of a credit card. On its own, it often ends up in a drawer. Given with a project, it gets used: a home ad blocker, a small home server, or a station tracking aircraft with an RTL-SDR. That last project pairs two gifts nicely: the Raspberry Pi stays on by a window, the stick receives aircraft messages around the clock, and the map shows up in any browser in the house. Add a card with the project idea.

• Who it's for: the IT person who likes self-hosting.
• What they need: a microSD card and an official power supply. Prices vary by model and memory: compare on approved resellers' sites.

8. A technical reference book

The Hardware Hacking Handbook by Jasper van Woudenberg and Colin O'Flynn (No Starch Press, 2021, 512 pages) covers embedded systems analysis, from debug interfaces to side-channel attacks. It's a book that stays on the desk.

• Who it's for: the IT person who wants to go deep.
• Price: about $60 from the publisher (2026), often less from European bookshops.

Gifts under €50 and under €100

9. The "first lab" combo under €50

A logic analyzer (€19.90) plus blank NFC cards (€14.90), so €34.80: enough to watch chips talk and programme tags, two different disciplines for the price of a video game. Add an SDR antenna kit (€17.90) if they already own an RTL-SDR.

Our gifts under €50 page gathers every option at that budget.

10. The radio combo under €100

An RTL-SDR (€60) and an antenna kit (€17.90), so €77.90. That's the setup that receives properly from the first evening, without buying another antenna a week later. Our gifts under €100 page has other combinations.

All our products are being launched: sign up on a product page to hear when orders open.

The "experience" gift: CTF, workshop, challenge

11. A subscription or challenge on a CTF platform

Several training platforms are free: picoCTF (run by Carnegie Mellon University), Root-Me (a long-running French-speaking community, also in English), Hackropole (the France Cybersecurity Challenge archive, with a hardware category) and CyberCTF, our sister site, which offers open-source pentest labs. Others, such as Hack The Box or TryHackMe, offer paid subscriptions that unlock more content; check current pricing on their sites.

The trick to make it a gift: choose a first challenge, print it on a card, and offer to solve it together on Christmas evening. For an IT person new to security, pick an easy "web" or "crypto" challenge: they build on things they already know (HTTP, encodings, a bit of code) and can often be solved in an evening. For someone more into electronics, Hackropole's hardware category gives a taste of what you do with a logic analyzer.

12. A workshop day or a conference ticket

A security conference is often the gift an IT person won't buy for themselves. Across Europe there are BSides events in many cities; in France, Le Hack (Paris), SSTIC (Rennes), Pass the SALT (Lille) and BreizhCTF (Rennes) bring the community together. Dates and ticketing change every year: check them before buying.

If the person works in a security team, their employer can also book a one-day hardware workshop: it's one of our offers for teams.

To choose between these 12 ideas, start from the person rather than the budget: our jargon-free guide to cybersecurity gifts helps you work out their type in five questions. And if you want one gift that covers several ideas on this list, the Hacker Starter Gift Set puts an RTL-SDR, an Evil Crow RF v2 board and a getting-started guide in one gift box; all our other ideas are in our hacker gift selection.