Team Generator

How to use the team generator

1. Paste or type the names in Participants (one per line). A column copied from a spreadsheet works: each row becomes one person, empty lines are skipped and duplicate names (in any capitalization) are counted once. The line under the box shows how many people there are and the team sizes you will get.
2. Under Split by, choose Number of teams (for example 4 teams) or People per team (for example teams of 5), then enter the Number.
3. Optional: tick Balance by skill level (write “Name, 7”) and add a level after each name, separated by a comma, a colon, a tab or a space: Maya, 8, Tom: 5. Decimals such as 6.5 are accepted. A line without a level counts as 0.
4. Optional: tick Pick a captain for each team. The first person listed in each team is marked as captain, and that person is chosen at random.
5. Optional: open Constraints (optional) and fill in Keep together and Keep apart (see below).
6. Press Generate teams. Each team appears in its own card. Reshuffle draws a new split with the same settings, and Copy copies all the teams as plain text, ready to paste into a chat, an email or a slide.

How the teams are balanced

Team sizes always differ by at most one person. With 23 people and Number of teams set to 4, you get three teams of 6 and one team of 5. With People per team, the tool makes as many teams as needed and then evens them out: 10 people in teams of 3 gives 4 teams (3, 3, 2, 2) rather than three teams of 3 and one person left alone. If you would rather have 3 teams of 3 or 4, choose Number of teams and enter 3.

Without skill levels or constraints, the list is shuffled with the cryptographic random number generator of your browser (Web Crypto, unbiased) and dealt out like cards. Every possible split with those team sizes is equally likely.

With Balance by skill level, the goal changes: the tool makes up to a hundred random splits, keeps the ones whose skill totals are closest, improves them by swapping players (or groups of the same size) between teams, and then picks one of the most even results at random. Under the teams you see the Gap between the strongest and weakest team. Because the tool looks for the fairest splits, Reshuffle gives different teams only when several splits are equally fair. Use levels you agree on, such as 1 to 10, and the result will be only as fair as those ratings.

Keep together and keep apart

Write one group per line, with names separated by commas, exactly as they appear in the list (capitalization does not matter):

• Keep together: Maya, Tom puts Maya and Tom in the same team. Useful for siblings, carpools or people who need a translator.
• Keep apart: Léa, Sam, Noah puts these three in three different teams. Useful for splitting the strongest players, rivals or two teachers.

Names that are not in the list are reported and ignored. If a “Keep together” group is bigger than a team, if the same people must be both together and apart, or if no split can satisfy every rule (for example three people to keep apart with only two teams), a message explains the problem and no teams are made.