Is the random name picker fair?

Yes. Every entry has the same chance: the winners are the first steps of a Fisher–Yates shuffle, driven by your browser’s cryptographic random number generator with rejection sampling, so no position in the list is favoured and there is no modulo bias. Being first or last in the list makes no difference.

How do I pick more than one winner?

Set How many winners. They are drawn one after another without putting anyone back, so nobody can win twice (unless their name is on two lines), and the order shown is the order drawn, handy for first, second and third prizes.

Is my list uploaded or saved?

No. The list stays in the text box on this page: it is not sent to any server, stored in your browser or included in share links. Close the tab and it is gone. Analytics, if you accepted them, record only that a button was pressed.

Why can I share the settings but not the winner?

Because a link cannot prove a draw: anyone could type a link that says someone won. The fair way is to agree on the settings, then draw once where everyone can watch, on a shared screen or a video call. The settings link carries the mode and numbers only, so each person who opens it pastes their own list and gets their own fresh draw.

What happens with duplicate names?

Each line is one entry, so a name on two lines has two chances, which is what you want for raffle tickets. The count under the box says how many repeats it found; tick “Count repeated names once” to give each name a single chance. Names are compared ignoring capitals and extra spaces.

The list is shuffled, then dealt out one entry per team in turn, like dealing cards. Every way of splitting the list is equally likely, and team sizes differ by at most one. Choose a number of teams, or a number of people per team and let the page work out how many teams that makes.

Can I use it for a giveaway or a classroom?

Yes: paste the entrants or the class list and pick. For anything with prizes, publish the rules first, and record or screen-share the draw so everyone can see it happened once.

Random Name Picker

Paste your list with one name per line, choose how many winners you want and press Pick: every entry has exactly the same chance (1 in 8 for a list of 8). The same list can be shuffled into a random order or split into teams of equal size. The draw happens in your browser with its cryptographic random number generator, and your list is never uploaded, saved or put in a link.

Updated 2026-09-28Runs in your browser: nothing you enter is uploadedHow this tool works

Result

Nothing drawn yet. Press the button to draw on this device.

The chance of being picked

With k winners from n entries, each entry is picked with probability k ÷ n, whatever its place in the list.
Entries	1 winner	3 winners	5 winners
5	1 in 5 (20%)	60%	certain
10	1 in 10 (10%)	30%	1 in 2 (50%)
20	1 in 20 (5%)	15%	1 in 4 (25%)
30	1 in 30 (3.3%)	1 in 10 (10%)	1 in 6 (16.7%)
50	1 in 50 (2%)	6%	1 in 10 (10%)
100	1 in 100 (1%)	3%	1 in 20 (5%)

Team sizes

Entries are dealt one at a time like cards, so no team has more than one member more than another.
People	2 teams	3 teams	4 teams	5 teams
10	5 + 5	4 + 3 + 3	3 + 3 + 2 + 2	2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 2
12	6 + 6	4 + 4 + 4	3 + 3 + 3 + 3	3 + 3 + 2 + 2 + 2
15	8 + 7	5 + 5 + 5	4 + 4 + 4 + 3	3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3
17	9 + 8	6 + 6 + 5	5 + 4 + 4 + 4	4 + 4 + 3 + 3 + 3
20	10 + 10	7 + 7 + 6	5 + 5 + 5 + 5	4 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 4
23	12 + 11	8 + 8 + 7	6 + 6 + 6 + 5	5 + 5 + 5 + 4 + 4
30	15 + 15	10 + 10 + 10	8 + 8 + 7 + 7	6 + 6 + 6 + 6 + 6

How to pick a random name from a list

Paste the list. One name or item per line. A single line separated by commas works too. Blank lines and extra spaces are ignored.
Decide about repeats. A name on two lines counts as two entries (two tickets). Tick “Count repeated names once” to give everyone one chance.
Choose what to do. Pick one or more winners (drawn in order: first, second, third), shuffle the whole list, or make teams by number of teams or people per team.
Draw where everyone can see. Press the button once, on a shared screen if the result matters. Share the settings link beforehand so everyone knows the rules; the list itself never goes in the link.

Frequently asked questions

Is the random name picker fair?: Yes. Every entry has the same chance: the winners are the first steps of a Fisher–Yates shuffle, driven by your browser’s cryptographic random number generator with rejection sampling, so no position in the list is favoured and there is no modulo bias. Being first or last in the list makes no difference.
How do I pick more than one winner?: Set How many winners. They are drawn one after another without putting anyone back, so nobody can win twice (unless their name is on two lines), and the order shown is the order drawn, handy for first, second and third prizes.
Is my list uploaded or saved?: No. The list stays in the text box on this page: it is not sent to any server, stored in your browser or included in share links. Close the tab and it is gone. Analytics, if you accepted them, record only that a button was pressed.
Why can I share the settings but not the winner?: Because a link cannot prove a draw: anyone could type a link that says someone won. The fair way is to agree on the settings, then draw once where everyone can watch, on a shared screen or a video call. The settings link carries the mode and numbers only, so each person who opens it pastes their own list and gets their own fresh draw.
What happens with duplicate names?: Each line is one entry, so a name on two lines has two chances, which is what you want for raffle tickets. The count under the box says how many repeats it found; tick “Count repeated names once” to give each name a single chance. Names are compared ignoring capitals and extra spaces.
How are teams made?: The list is shuffled, then dealt out one entry per team in turn, like dealing cards. Every way of splitting the list is equally likely, and team sizes differ by at most one. Choose a number of teams, or a number of people per team and let the page work out how many teams that makes.
Can I use it for a giveaway or a classroom?: Yes: paste the entrants or the class list and pick. For anything with prizes, publish the rules first, and record or screen-share the draw so everyone can see it happened once.

How it works

Your list is split into lines (or at commas when it is all on one line), trimmed, and blank lines are dropped; with “Count repeated names once”, lines that match an earlier one, ignoring capitals and spacing, are left out. Winners are drawn with the first k steps of a Fisher–Yates shuffle: at each step one of the entries not yet drawn is chosen uniformly and moved to the front. A full shuffle runs every step, so each of the n! orders is equally likely. Teams are a full shuffle dealt round-robin. Each random choice uses crypto.getRandomValues and rejection sampling (a random 32-bit word is accepted only below the largest multiple of the range, then reduced modulo the range), so every choice is exactly uniform. All of this runs in your browser; nothing is sent or stored.

Sources

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