Random Team Generator

Splitting a class, a five-a-side game or a workshop into groups by hand always looks biased to someone. This team generator shuffles the names with a fair random draw and deals them into the number of teams — or the team size — you choose. It can also balance teams by skill rating, keep certain people apart, choose a captain for each team and give teams colour or animal names.

How to use this tool

1. Paste the names, one per line. To balance by skill, add a rating after a comma, such as “Sam, 7”.
2. Choose the number of teams or the number of people per team.
3. Optionally tick skill balancing and captains, choose team names and list pairs who should not be on the same team.
4. Press the button and copy the team list.

Formula

Teams = ⌈people ÷ team size⌉; team sizes differ by at most 1

In random mode the list is shuffled (Fisher–Yates with unbiased secure random integers) and dealt in turn. In balanced mode players are sorted by skill — ties in random order — and dealt in a snake order (1→k, then k→1), which keeps team strength close. Keep-apart rules are met by reshuffling or by swapping a player with someone of the closest skill.

Example

Ten players into 3 people per team gives ⌈10 ÷ 3⌉ = 4 teams of 3, 3, 2 and 2. With ratings 10, 9, 8 and 7 split into two balanced teams, the snake order gives 10 + 7 = 17 and 9 + 8 = 17 — perfectly even.