Team Randomizer

Written byOleh Soloninupdated 5 October 2026

Participants (one per line)

Number of teams

Result

TeamsTeam 1: Chloe, George, Anna Team 2: Daniel, Elena, Ben
Participants6
Teams2
Largest team3

Shuffled properly, then dealt out evenly

Shuffle a list of names and divide it evenly into any number of teams. For classrooms, workshops and five-a-side.

Letting captains pick is slow and leaves someone chosen last. A random split is faster and takes the social sting out of it entirely.

Names are shuffled with a Fisher-Yates pass and then dealt round-robin, so team sizes differ by at most one even when the count does not divide evenly.

How to use

Enter the participants, one name per line.
Set the number of teams or the size of a team.
Split — the calculator shuffles the list and deals it out in rotation.
Redraw if the split does not suit: each division is independent of the last.

How a list that does not divide evenly gets split

The figures in the table are the result of dealing in rotation: the list is shuffled and then the participants go round the teams one at a time. The remainder decides how many teams get an extra person.

So the teams never differ by more than one: eleven people across three teams comes out 4-4-3 rather than 5-3-3. That is a property of dealing in rotation and it holds for any number of participants.

Dealing in rotation: team sizes when the division leaves a remainder.
Participants	Teams	Team sizes	Remainder
10	2	5 and 5	0
11	3	4, 4 and 3	2
12	5	3, 3, 2, 2 and 2	2
20	6	4, 4, 3, 3, 3 and 3	2

What this calculator shows

Every team with its members listed
Participant and team counts
The largest team size, so you can see the split is fair

What to keep in mind

Teams are balanced by size only — skill, age and role are not considered.
Uses a Fisher-Yates shuffle, which gives every arrangement equal probability.

FAQs

Are the teams evenly sized?

As even as the numbers allow. Dealing round-robin means sizes never differ by more than one person.

Can I balance by skill instead?

Not here — this randomises by name only. For skill balance, sort players into tiers first and randomise within each tier.

Is the shuffle genuinely random?

It uses Fisher-Yates, which gives every possible arrangement equal probability. Naive shuffles built on sort comparators do not.

How do I enter names?

One per line or separated by commas. Both work, and blank entries are ignored.

Why do the teams come out different sizes?

Because participants rarely divide evenly. Dealing in rotation spreads the remainder one person at a time across the first teams, so the largest and the smallest never differ by more than one.

Is the split fair?

Yes: the list is shuffled in full first and only then dealt. Where someone sat in the original list has no bearing on their team.

Worked example

Six people, two teams

Input: Six names, 2 teams

Output: Two teams of three

Note: With seven names one team gets four. Round-robin dealing keeps the gap to a single person rather than piling everyone into the first team.

Useful links

All tools in Random Choice

Team Randomizer

Result

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