Fair teams without the playground ritual
Picking teams by hand has two well-known problems. The same two people end up as captains every week, and the same kid waits to be chosen last. Splitting at random fixes both, but plain random can hand one team all the strong players and put the two friends who never stop chatting side by side.
This generator keeps the randomness and adds the rules a coach or teacher actually needs. Give each player a level from 1 to 5, or any number you like, and the teams come out with similar totals. Write who must be in different teams — two goalkeepers, two rivals, two siblings who argue — and who must stay together, such as a pupil and their support partner.
Team sizes never differ by more than one player. If you want, each team also gets a captain chosen at random from its own members.
Making teams
The rules apply every time you press the button, so you can reshuffle without retyping anything.
Type the players, one per line. To balance teams, add a level after a vertical bar: “Ana | 4”. Players without a level count as 1.
Set the number of teams. Under “Keep apart”, list people who must be in different teams on one line; under “Keep together”, list people who must share a team.
Press “Make teams”. Read the result out, copy it into a chat, or press “Shuffle again” for a fresh split under the same rules.
What you can control
Each setting is a rule the split respects, not a suggestion.
- Up to 200 players split into 2 to 20 teams
- Team sizes that differ by at most one player
- Optional skill levels after | for balanced totals
- Keep-apart groups, one per line
- Keep-together groups that always share a team
- A random captain from each team's own members
- Your own team names, one per line
- Copy all teams as plain text for a chat or a board
Pitches, classrooms and offices
Anywhere a group needs to split quickly and nobody wants to argue about it.
A five-a-side organiser rates twelve regulars from 1 to 5 and gets two teams whose totals differ by a point at most.
A PE teacher splits thirty pupils into four teams and keeps the two goalkeepers apart.
A primary teacher forms project groups and keeps a pupil with their support partner in the same group.
A workshop facilitator mixes departments by putting each department on its own keep-apart line.
A quiz night splits strangers into tables of four with a captain to write down the answers.
A family games evening makes two teams of cousins and keeps the two youngest together.
How the split is made
First, people on the same keep-together line are joined into one unit. Units are then placed one by one, largest first, into a team that still has room and contains none of their keep-apart rivals. Without balancing, the team is picked at random among those with the most room left; with balancing, it goes to the team with the lowest total so far.
After balancing, the generator tries random swaps of single players between teams and keeps only the swaps that narrow the gap between the strongest and weakest team. If a combination of rules cannot be satisfied — three people who must all be apart in two teams, for example — you get a clear message instead of a split that quietly breaks a rule.
What it does not know
It knows only the levels you type. It cannot tell that two players are brilliant together or that someone is having an off day; adjust levels or rules when you see it.
Balanced does not always mean equal. With very uneven levels, a gap of a point or two may remain after the best swaps.
Teams are not saved or shared with players; copy them where the group can see them.
For teams people accept
- Use a small level scale, 1 to 3 or 1 to 5. Fine-grained scores give a false sense of precision.
- Put rules in before the first split and say them out loud, so nobody thinks you reshuffled to get the result you wanted.
- For a recurring game, keep the list in the box: the page remembers it in this browser.
- If one team is clearly stronger after a game, adjust a couple of levels rather than adding more keep-apart rules.
Team generator questions
How do I make balanced teams?
Add a level after a vertical bar on each line, for example “Ben | 3”, and switch on balancing. The strongest players are spread first and swaps even out the totals.
Can I keep two people in different teams?
Yes. Put them on one line under “Keep apart”. A line can hold more names, as long as there are at least that many teams.
Can I keep people together?
Yes. Put them on one line under “Keep together”. They count as a group, so the group must fit within one team's size.
Are team sizes always equal?
They differ by at most one player. With 14 players and 4 teams you get two teams of four and two teams of three.
How is this different from shuffling a list into groups?
The list shuffle only splits by count. Here you also get skill balancing, keep-apart and keep-together rules, captains and team names.
What happens if the rules cannot all be met?
The page tells you which kind of problem it found, such as a group bigger than a team, instead of producing teams that ignore a rule.
Is the player list stored anywhere?
Only in this browser, so the list is still there next time. Nothing is sent to a server when you make teams.