A random team generator that splits any list in one click

Picking teams by captain is the slowest, meanest way to start a game — and in a classroom or an office it's worse, because everyone can see the order. A random team generator takes the whole list, shuffles it and deals it out, so nobody is chosen last and nobody has to justify the split. Paste your names into SpinWheely, set the number of teams, press Assign. That's the entire process.

The tool starts with eight sample names so you can see the shape of it. Clear them and paste your own list straight from a register, a spreadsheet column or a group chat — one name per line is all it needs.

Even sizes, even when the maths doesn't work

Twenty-three people into four teams doesn't divide, and a lazy tool would hand you 6/6/6/5 with the short straw always going to the last group. Names here are dealt round-robin after the shuffle, so the sizes stay as close as arithmetic allows and the remainder lands wherever the shuffle put it. If your groups have a hard cap — five-a-side, four to a table, six per bench — set the max per team and anyone who doesn't fit stays visible in the unassigned list instead of quietly disappearing.

Classrooms, PE lessons and group projects

Teachers reach for a team randomizer for the same reason every time: it ends the negotiation. Group work where friends always cluster produces the same three confident voices doing the talking; a random split breaks those habits and nobody can argue with a draw they watched happen on the board. Project it, run it once, write the groups up, move on — the whole thing takes less time than reading the register.

For PE, run the draw before the kit comes out. Teams decided in advance of the pitch stops the huddle where two children are still standing there waiting to be picked.

Work, sport and events

A random group generator is the fastest way to break a workshop into breakout rooms, assign a hackathon into squads, or shuffle a quiz night into tables of six. Sunday-league sides use it for training-night bibs; a weekly five-a-side that reshuffles every session ends up more competitive than one where the same two teams calcify.

Export as PDF, CSV or text once you're happy, then paste it into the group chat or print it. The result is a record, which matters more than it sounds — "we drew it, here's the sheet" closes any conversation about favouritism.

What "random" actually means here

The shuffle uses crypto.getRandomValues() in your browser — the same randomness source used for security tokens, not a predictable pseudo-random sequence. The generator has no idea who is strong, quiet, friends with whom, or how last week went; it only sees a list. That blindness is the feature. If you need one pair kept together, enter them as a single entry; if you need two kept apart, draw first and swap once afterwards, in the open.

Nothing is uploaded. Names stay in your browser, which is the answer to the reasonable question a school or HR team asks before typing thirty real people into a website.

Other SpinWheely tools for the same session

Need one person rather than teams — who goes first, who presents, who's it? The wheel of names does that in a spin. For deciding which team kicks off, the coin flip or a random number generator settles it, and the main spin the wheel tool builds a custom wheel from any list you paste in. All free, no signup.