Random Team Generator
Two ways to split
Paste one name per line, then choose how you want the split to work.
By number of groups. You know you want four teams. The tool works out who goes where.
By people per group. You know each table seats five, or the project suits three people. The tool works out how many groups that makes — rounding up, so nobody is left over.
The second mode is the one people reach for less often and need more. Capacity is usually the real constraint; the number of groups is a consequence.
Sizes come out balanced
The tool shuffles the whole list, then deals one name at a time around the groups like cards. Seven people into three teams gives 3 / 2 / 2.
The naive alternative — cut the shuffled list into equal blocks and put the remainder somewhere — gives 3 / 3 / 1, or 2 / 2 / 3 with the leftovers piled into the last group. Dealing round-robin spreads the remainder by one, which is what people expect when they say “split us evenly”.
How the list is read
One name per line. Novák, Jan on its own line stays one person — commas only
split when everything sits on a single line, which is what you get pasting a
spreadsheet row instead of a column.
Splitting again will not reliably separate two people
Every split is a fresh shuffle, so pressing the button again gives different teams. People often use that to break up a pairing they did not want — and are then surprised when the same two end up together again.
The maths is unforgiving. Two specific people land in the same group with probability roughly 1 divided by the number of groups, every single time you split.
| Groups | Chance they are together | …at least once in 5 splits |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | 50% | 97% |
| 3 | 33% | 87% |
| 4 | 25% | 76% |
| 5 | 20% | 67% |
With four teams, re-rolling five times to separate two people gives you a 76% chance of pairing them at least once anyway. Randomness has no memory of your last attempt and no opinion about who should sit apart.
If two people genuinely must not be in the same group, place them by hand first and run the tool on everyone else. That is a constraint, and constraints are not what a shuffle is for.
Where a team generator gets used
- Classrooms — project groups, reading pairs, lab benches
- Workshops — breakout rooms, discussion tables
- Sport — pickup teams that nobody gets to captain
- Events — seating plans, icebreaker groups
- Work — rotating pair assignments, review buddies