Guide · Sports, PE & group work
Random Team Generator
Updated: June 2026
Picking teams by captains is a small social cruelty — someone is always last. A random team generator skips all of that: it takes the full roster, shuffles it, and deals everyone into balanced teams with no favouritism and no hurt feelings. This guide covers splitting by number of teams or by team size, keeping things even, and re-rolling until the mix feels right.
Free · No upload · Instant in the browser
From a name list to teams
Paste everyone's name, one per line, then switch the mode to Make teams. The tool reads the list, shuffles it with a proper Fisher–Yates pass, and deals the names out. Because the shuffle comes first and the deal is round-robin, membership is genuinely random every time and the team sizes stay as even as the numbers allow — when the roster doesn't divide cleanly, sizes differ by at most one person.
Trailing spaces are trimmed and blank lines ignored, so you can paste straight from a register or a sign-up sheet without tidying it first. The counter confirms how many players it found, which is your check that nobody got merged into the line above.
By number of teams, or by team size
There are two natural ways to split a group, and the generator does both. Choose Number of teams when the count of teams is fixed — four corners of the gym, two sides for a scrimmage, three project groups. Choose Players per team when the size matters more — pairs for an exercise, fives for basketball, fours for a quiz. In size mode, any leftover players form a smaller final team rather than being forced into a full one.
| Goal | Mode | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Two even sides | Number of teams | 2 |
| Groups of four | Players per team | 4 |
| Pairs | Players per team | 2 |
Re-roll until it feels fair
Random doesn't always look balanced — sometimes the shuffle lands all the strong players together by chance. There's nothing wrong with hitting the button again: each press is an independent fresh shuffle, so you can re-deal a few times and pick the spread that works. If you want to deliberately keep certain people apart or together, the cleanest trick is to run the generator on each subgroup separately and combine the results.
Stacking with weights
If you want a stronger player to anchor a team, you can't pin them directly, but you can pad the roster: add placeholder lines or repeat entries to nudge the round-robin. For most classrooms and pickup games, though, the honest random deal is the whole point — it removes the argument about who chose whom. Number the teams on or off depending on whether you want neat "Team 1 / Team 2" labels or just the groupings.
Runs anywhere, stores nothing
Rosters of children's names shouldn't be uploaded to a random website, and here they aren't. The split happens entirely in your browser — the names are read from the box, shuffled on your device, and never sent anywhere. It keeps working on patchy gym or playground Wi-Fi once loaded, there's no sign-up, and closing the tab clears everything.
Frequently asked questions
How do I split a list into random teams?
Paste the names, switch to Make teams, choose how many teams you want, and generate. The list is shuffled and dealt out evenly.
Can I set the team size instead?
Yes. Switch to Players per team and enter a size; leftover players form a smaller final team.
Are the teams balanced?
Yes. After a shuffle, members are dealt round-robin, so sizes differ by at most one and membership is fully random.
Can I re-roll the teams?
Yes. Each press is a fresh independent shuffle, so re-deal as many times as you like.