Random Team Generator
Paste a list of names, choose how many teams you want or how many people should be on each, and get a random split. The shuffle is Fisher–Yates over your browser's cryptographic random numbers, so every arrangement is equally likely, and when the names do not divide evenly the tool says which teams took the extra person instead of quietly leaving a short team at the end.
Teams
Teams appear here.
Nothing to split yet.
Fisher–Yates on crypto randomnessUneven splits stated, not hiddenNothing leaves your browserNo account, no list length limit
Names are separated by line breaks and by commas, so a column pasted from a spreadsheet and a comma list both work. Shuffle again draws a fresh split, and so does changing the names or the number of teams. Renaming the teams leaves everyone where they are.
Fair means every arrangement is equally likely. The shuffle is Fisher–Yates over crypto.getRandomValues, drawn without modulo bias, so no name is favoured by where it sat in your list. The one-line version other tools use, sorting with a random comparator, is not a shuffle: it leaves the order you typed showing through. When the names do not divide evenly the earlier teams take the extra person, and the pane header, the note and the team rows all say so. Nobody is dropped. If you want one name out of a list rather than a whole split, the Random Name Picker is the tool for that.
Accuracy. Every arrangement is equally likely: the shuffle is Fisher–Yates on cryptographic random numbers. When names do not divide evenly the earlier teams take the extra person, and the header says which.
Common questions
- How random is the split, really?
- The names are shuffled with Fisher–Yates, walking the list from the end and swapping each position with a randomly chosen earlier one. Each index comes from crypto.getRandomValues, the browser's own cryptographic generator, and is mapped onto the range by rejection sampling rather than by a remainder, because a remainder would hand the first few positions one extra chance each. Done this way every possible arrangement is equally likely. Many team generators instead sort the list with a random comparator, which is not a shuffle at all: the comparator is inconsistent, so the result depends on the browser's sort and the order you typed shows through.
- What happens when the names do not divide evenly?
- The teams are made as equal as arithmetic allows, they never differ by more than one person, and the earlier teams take the extras. Eleven names into three teams gives 4, 4, 3, and the tool prints that split in the pane header and in a note under the teams, so an uneven result is stated rather than hidden. Asking for teams of four out of ten gives three teams of 4, 3, 3 rather than 4, 4, 2, because one team two people short is a worse answer than two teams one person short. Nobody is ever dropped.
- What if the same name appears twice in my list?
- Duplicates are kept by default, because two people really can share a first name, and both of them need a team. The Names readout counts how many entries were repeated so you can see it happened, and a Remove switch strips the repeats and keeps the first spelling. Two entries count as the same name when they match apart from capitalisation and extra spaces, so Ben, ben and BEN are one person typed three times.
- How do I paste the teams into a message?
- Copy teams puts every team on the clipboard as plain text, one team per paragraph: the team name on its own line, then one member per line. That pastes cleanly into Slack, WhatsApp, email or a document without turning into a table. Each team row also has its own Copy button for a single team. Nothing is uploaded to do this, the copy is made in your browser.
- Can I name the teams something other than numbers?
- Yes. Numbered gives Team 1, Team 2 and so on. Colours gives twelve named teams, Red through Lime, and past twelve it numbers round again as Red 2, Blue 2. Custom takes your own list, separated by commas or line breaks, and falls back to Team 4, Team 5 for any teams your list does not reach, so no team is left unnamed.
- Is there a limit on how many names I can paste?
- No limit is imposed. The whole tool runs in your browser with nothing uploaded and no account, so the practical ceiling is your device's memory rather than a plan. Names are separated by line breaks and by commas, which means a column copied out of a spreadsheet and a comma list typed by hand both work. Your list and settings are remembered in this browser only, so the same roster is there when you come back.
Every arrangement is equally likely: the shuffle is Fisher–Yates on cryptographic random numbers. When names do not divide evenly the earlier teams take the extra person, and the header says which.