Method 1 — Random
Best for casual games where skill differences are small. Fast, neutral, removes favouritism.
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How to make fair teams (the easy way)
Three simple methods — random, skill-balanced, and snake-draft — and the embedded tool to do all three in seconds.
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When to use this
Anyone organising recurring games or events who wants the same fairness method every time so people stop arguing. The guide explains why each method works; the tool runs it.
Step by step
- 1
Paste your list
- 2
Add ratings if you have them
- 3
Generate fair sides
Method 2 — Skill-balanced (snake draft)
Sort by rating, deal in a snake pattern (1, 2, 2, 1, 1, 2…). Spreads strong and weak players evenly. The tool does this automatically when ratings are present.
Method 3 — Manual draft with captains
Two captains, alternate picks, but with a twist: don't pick from the same end of the rating list. The generator removes the social drama, but if you must use captains, hide weak/strong info.
What 'fair' actually means here
When we say a split is fair we mean two specific things. First, team sizes differ by at most one — never by two — regardless of how the headcount divides. Second, in skill-balanced mode the total rating per team stays within roughly one rating point of the average. Those are mathematical guarantees of the algorithm, not marketing language. If you want to verify, generate the same input twice with different seeds: the per-team totals will land in the same narrow band each time. Pure-random mode trades that balance for surprise — useful when the ratings are noisy or the activity is recreational. Read the full algorithm description on the methodology page if you want the snake-draft maths.
Practical tips before you paste
Three small habits make the output noticeably better. (1) Strip leading numbers and bullets from your list — paste plain names, one per line, so the parser doesn't treat '1. Alex' as a name. (2) If you have ratings, append them after the name with a space, e.g. 'Alex 4'. The generator accepts integers and decimals from 1 to 10. (3) Decide up-front whether absentees should be excluded or kept as ghosts. Excluding gives tighter teams; keeping them lets you swap names back in later without regenerating. The 'Copy as text' button preserves your line order so you can edit and re-paste.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Is random ever unfair?
It can produce streaks (one stronger team). Over a season, random averages out — but for a single high-stakes match, use balanced.
How do I rate players the first time?
Quick 1–5 from your gut. Update after each session. Within a few weeks, ratings stabilise.
Is anything sent to your servers?
No. The team generator runs entirely in your browser using JavaScript. The names you paste are kept in component memory only and are never transmitted, logged, or persisted unless you explicitly export them. Closing the tab clears the data. See the privacy and methodology pages for the technical detail.
Can I lock specific people onto the same team?
Yes. After generating, click any name to swap it with another, or use drag and drop in the team panel. For one-off groupings (siblings, carpool partners) this is the fastest path. For repeated locks across many regenerations, give the locked group a shared rating that's slightly above average and use balanced mode — they'll cluster together most of the time.
Why do I sometimes get the same split twice?
On very small inputs (under ~10 names) there are only a handful of mathematically distinct splits, so repeats are inevitable. The shuffle is cryptographically random — it's just that the space of valid outputs is small. Either add more names or accept the duplicate; either is fine.
Keep exploring
Related tools & guides
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Ready to run your event?
Free forever for basic use. No signup required. The free version really does do the job.
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