An odd team count like 7 is fiddly to do by hand — paste your names and the generator distributes everyone evenly across all seven groups.
The free version does the job. The optional template pack just makes brackets look beautiful for events, classrooms and clubs.
Free forever for basic use · No signup required
Useful when you have around 28–56 people and a single bracket of 7 small squads — typical for school sports days, summer camp colour groups, and corporate training breakouts where one trainer can comfortably watch seven tables.
One per line.
Mode is set for you.
Copy, print, or send to the bracket maker.
Seven is awkward: it doesn't divide a class of 30 cleanly, and most picking methods leave one team short. The generator just rotates assignment so the imbalance is at most one person per team, which is the mathematical best you can do.
After generating, copy the result to clipboard or export CSV. You can paste the same teams into the bracket maker later so the day's standings stay consistent.
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.
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.
Some teams will have one extra person. The generator spreads the extras so the gap is never larger than one.
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.
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.
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.
Six teams suits bigger events: classrooms of 30, summer camp groups, esports leagues, conference workshops.
OpenEight teams is the cleanest single-elimination size — three rounds, no byes, perfect symmetry.
OpenFive teams is great for league formats and rotation stations. Paste names, hit generate, share the result.
OpenStop one team carrying the whole game. Rate each player 1–5 and we'll split them into teams whose total skill is as even as possible.
OpenFree forever for basic use. No signup required. The free version really does do the job.
Want prettier prints? See the optional template pack
