Spin the Wheel
Type one option per line, then spin. The wheel picks a winner at random.
How it works
Each line becomes one slice. When you press Spin, the wheel turns and stops on a result chosen with your browser’s secure random number generator, so every option has the same chance.
Ideas
- Pick who goes first, who pays, or what to eat tonight.
- Choose a student or a raffle winner — turn on “Remove winner” to pick several in a row.
- Need groups instead? Try the random team generator.
FAQ
Is the wheel really random?
Yes. The winner is chosen first with crypto.getRandomValues, then the animation lands on that slice.
How many options can I add?
Up to 100 lines work well; beyond that the labels become too small to read.
Are my names saved anywhere?
No. They stay in your browser tab and are not uploaded.
How to run a spin
- Replace the sample names in the text box with your own options, one per line. The wheel redraws as you type, and blank lines are ignored.
- Press Spin. The wheel turns for about four and a half seconds, slows down and stops with a slice under the black pointer on the right-hand edge.
- The winner appears under the wheel. To draw several winners in a row, tick Remove winner after spin: after each result that line disappears from the box, so nobody can be picked twice.
You need at least two non-empty lines; with fewer the wheel shows "Add at least 2 options" instead of spinning.
How the winner is chosen
The animation is not what decides the result. When you press Spin, the code first picks the winning slice number using the browser's secure random generator, and only then calculates how far the wheel must rotate so that this slice ends up at the pointer. It adds five to seven extra full turns so the motion looks natural, and slows the rotation with a cubic ease-out curve. The landing spot inside the winning slice is always the middle of it.
The random pick avoids a subtle flaw called modulo bias. A 32-bit random number is only used if it falls below the largest multiple of your option count; anything above is thrown away and drawn again. For six options, for example, the usable range stops at 4,294,967,292, so no option is favoured by the leftover few values. Every line has exactly the same chance, 1 in the number of lines.
Weighting and duplicates
Every line becomes one equal slice, so the wheel has no weight setting. You can still change the odds by repeating a line: if "Pizza" appears twice and "Salad" once, Pizza owns two of the three slices and wins two times out of three on average. Be careful with accidental duplicates when you paste a list, since they quietly raise someone's chances. With "Remove winner" on, only the single slice that won is deleted, so a name entered twice can still come up again.
Example: a class raffle
A teacher wants three presentation volunteers from 24 students. She pastes the 24 names, ticks "Remove winner after spin" and spins three times. Each spin has a 1 in 24, then 1 in 23, then 1 in 22 chance for any remaining student, which is exactly what drawing names from a hat does. The shortened list left in the box is the pool for next time, so she can copy it before closing the page.
The other tools on this site's wheel pages
- Teams: the list is shuffled with a Fisher-Yates shuffle using the same secure generator, then dealt out one name at a time to each team in turn. You can ask for 2 to 20 teams, and team sizes never differ by more than one person. Ten names in three teams give 4, 3 and 3.
- Coin and dice: a coin flip is a fair 50/50 draw between Heads and Tails. For dice you choose how many to roll and how many sides each has; each die is an independent draw from 1 to the number of sides, and a total is shown when you roll more than one.
Tips and limits
- Labels longer than 18 characters are cut off on the wheel itself. The full text of the line is still used for the result shown below the wheel.
- Text size shrinks as slices multiply, down to a minimum of 11 pixels. With around 30 or more options the slices get thin and the labels become hard to read, so for big lists consider splitting them into rounds.
- Colours repeat in a cycle of eight, so with many options two slices of the same colour may sit near each other. That is only cosmetic.
- Names are held in the page only. Reloading clears your edits and brings back the sample list, so keep your own copy of any list you reuse.
- A spin cannot be skipped or cancelled once started. Edits you make during the animation do not change the result of that spin.
- This is a casual randomiser. For a prize draw that has legal or regulatory requirements, check the rules for your situation rather than relying on any web page.
More questions
Can the wheel be rigged or remember previous results?
No. Nothing from earlier spins is stored, and each draw is independent. Getting the same name twice in a row is normal chance; with six options it happens one time in six.
Why did the pointer seem to stop between two slices?
It should not, because the wheel always lands on the centre of the chosen slice. On a very small or scaled-down screen the picture may look slightly off, but the text shown under the wheel is the authoritative result.
How do I pick several winners without repeats?
Turn on "Remove winner after spin" and spin once per winner. Alternatively, use the Teams page to shuffle the whole list at once and take the first names from a team.