Enter participants and click Generate.
How Fair Team Selection Works
The list is shuffled first, then split, and with Spread (the default) team sizes never differ by more than one: 10 players in 3 teams gives 4, 3 and 3. Paste one name per line, choose a number of teams or a team size, pick how leftovers are handled, and generate. Every possible split of the group is equally likely.
Participants are first shuffled using the Fisher-Yates algorithm, the mathematically proven method for generating a uniformly random permutation. They are then split into teams in that shuffled order. With Spread, the default, leftover players go one each to the first teams, so team sizes never differ by more than one.
Fisher-Yates Shuffle
Balanced Sizes
Team Sizes by Leftover Setting
When the group does not divide evenly, the leftover setting decides where the extra players go.
| People | Teams | Spread (default) | Add to last team |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7 | 2 | 4, 3 | 3, 4 |
| 10 | 3 | 4, 3, 3 | 3, 3, 4 |
| 11 | 4 | 3, 3, 3, 2 | 2, 2, 2, 5 |
| 23 | 4 | 6, 6, 6, 5 | 5, 5, 5, 8 |
| 30 | 4 | 8, 8, 7, 7 | 7, 7, 7, 9 |
In Team size mode the tool makes as many full teams as fit. With 10 people and a size of 4 that is 2 teams: Spread gives 5 and 5, and Alternates gives 4 and 4 plus 2 subs.
How Many Ways to Split a Group?
Even small groups have a lot of possible line-ups, which is why the same teams rarely come up twice.
| Group | Possible splits | Chance two friends are together |
|---|---|---|
| 8 people, 2 teams of 4 | 35 | 42.9% |
| 10 people, 2 teams of 5 | 126 | 44.4% |
| 12 people, 2 teams of 6 | 462 | 45.5% |
| 12 people, 3 teams of 4 | 5,775 | 27.3% |
| 20 people, 4 teams of 5 | 488,864,376 | 21.1% |
The chance that two named people end up on the same team is (team size minus 1) divided by (group size minus 1): once your friend is placed, only the remaining seats on that team count.
Random Teams vs Skill-Balanced Teams
A random split is fair in process, not in strength: now and then all the strongest players land together. For a closer game, rank the players and use a snake draft. With 2 teams the picking order is A, B, B, A, A, B, B, A. Ranked 1 (best) to 8, team A gets players 1, 4, 5 and 8 and team B gets 2, 3, 6 and 7, and both rank totals come to 18. With 3 teams the order runs A, B, C, C, B, A and repeats.
A good mix: snake-draft the top players as captains or seeds, then use this generator for everyone else.
How the shuffle works
The page uses the Fisher-Yates shuffle with Math.random, the browser's standard pseudorandom generator. Every order of the list is equally likely, so it makes no difference whose name you type first. Everything runs in your browser.