The competition host provides the raw data and a description of the problem.

Participants experiment with different techniques and compete against each other to produce the best models. For most competitions, submissions are scored immediately (based on their predictive accuracy relative to a hidden solution file) and summarized on a live leaderboard.

After the deadline passes, the competition host pays prize money in exchange for the winning model. The prize money can be made contigent on the model achieving a certain level of predictive accuracy.