Wheel of names
Paste your list of names, give the wheel a spin, and let chance pick a fair winner. Perfect for classrooms, giveaways, and deciding who goes first.
Fair by design: each spin draws from your browser’s cryptographic random number generator, giving every entry an equal 1-in-8 chance. No server is involved.
One entry per line. 8 entries on the wheel.
Keep a list per class or per group. They stay in this browser only, and nothing is uploaded.
The entries travel in the part of the link after the #, which browsers never send to a server. Nobody, including us, can read a shared wheel from a log.
Please keep the attribution link on the last line. It is the only thing we ask in return, and it is what pays for the wheel being free.
What is a wheel of names?
A wheel of names is a spinning wheel with one name on each slice. You drop in a list of people, give it a spin, and the pointer lands on a single random name. Because every slice is the same size, each name has an equal chance, so the pick is fair no matter where a name sits in your list. It turns choosing a person into a quick, visible moment that a whole room can watch and trust.
Who uses it
Teachers spin a wheel of names to call on students without playing favorites, which keeps a class attentive and takes the awkwardness out of cold-calling. Streamers and marketers use it to draw a giveaway winner live, so entrants can see the draw was genuinely random. Teams use it to set a standup or presentation order, and families use it to decide who chooses the film or clears the table. Anywhere a group needs to pick a person fairly, the wheel does the job in seconds.
How to use the wheel of names
- Type or paste one name per line in the entry box.
- Hit spin, or click the SPIN hub in the middle of the wheel.
- The pointer at the top marks the winning name when it stops.
- Keep the winner, or choose Remove and re-spin to draw the next name without repeats.
Private, and yours to keep
Your list of names never leaves your browser, so it stays private and the wheel works even on a shaky connection. Save your wheel to reuse the same names next time, share a link that pre-loads them, or copy the embed code to drop the wheel onto your own class site or giveaway page. Prefer a plain list draw without the wheel? The random name picker does the same fair draw in a simpler layout, and the team generator splits a roster into balanced teams.
Pasting a class list or a spreadsheet column
One name per line is all the entry box wants, and a column copied out of a spreadsheet already arrives that way. Select the name column in Google Sheets or Excel, copy it, and paste straight in. Commas work too, so a CSV row pastes fine. Blank lines are ignored and stray spaces around a name are trimmed, so a slightly messy paste does not need cleaning up first.
Duplicates are allowed and counted rather than silently merged, which matters when two people share a first name: the line under the box tells you how many duplicates it found, so you know to add a surname where you need one. If you paste a roster from Google Classroom, copy the student names out of the roster view; Classroom itself will not hand over a list any other way.
Is the draw really random?
Yes, and here is the specific answer rather than the reassuring one. Each spin calls crypto.getRandomValues, the browser cryptographic random source, not Math.random, whose specification does not require it to be uniform or unpredictable. The 32-bit value that comes back is then mapped onto the number of names using rejection sampling: any draw landing in the incomplete final block of the range is discarded and redrawn. Without that step a wheel whose size does not divide evenly into a power of two would favour the names near the top of the list, very slightly, forever.
Because that is a claim rather than a demonstration, it is tested and the results are published. The fairness page carries chi-squared goodness-of-fit results across 16 million draws, one test per wheel size on the site, along with the code that produced them so you can repeat the run yourself.
Frequently asked questions
Is the wheel of names free?
Yes, completely free with no sign up. Type or paste your names, spin, and it picks a fair winner. Every tool on the site runs in your browser at no cost.
How many names can I add to the wheel?
As many as you like. Paste a whole class roster or a long giveaway list; the labels shrink to fit and the full names stay in your list.
Can I remove a name once it is picked?
Yes. When the winner pops up, choose Remove and re-spin to take that name off the wheel, which is exactly what you want for drawing several winners in a row.
Can I save my wheel of names for next time?
Yes. Save the wheel to your browser with one click and the same names are ready the next time you open the page on that device.
Want a themed wheel instead? Browse the preset wheels or see all SpinPicker tools.
Using this with a class?
The classroom page adds remove after pick, reset round, a saved list per class and a whiteboard display mode, and explains in detail why student names never leave the browser. To split the class into groups instead of picking one student, use the team generator.
Comparing tools? The wheel of names alternative page is an honest feature-by-feature comparison with the best known tool in this category, including the features it has and this one does not.