How It Works

Team Generator takes your list of participants, cleans it up (removing blank lines and duplicates if you choose), shuffles the names, and distributes them across teams using a round‑robin method. This keeps teams as even as possible and avoids “all the last names in one team” or other accidental clustering.

Step-by-step

• 1) Paste names: Enter one person per line (or separate by commas).
• 2) Choose teams: Set the number of teams you want to create.
• 3) Select a method: Random shuffle + round‑robin distribution (balanced) or strict random fill.
• 4) Generate: Instantly get teams formatted for copying, printing, or sharing.
• 5) Export: Copy to clipboard or download a .txt file for emails, chat apps, or documents.

Key Features

Balanced distribution

Names are assigned in a round‑robin cycle so team sizes stay as equal as possible. If your participant count doesn’t divide perfectly, only the first few teams receive one extra member.

Multiple input formats

Paste a newline list, a comma-separated list, or a mix of both. The tool trims whitespace and ignores empty entries so you don’t need to pre-clean your roster.

Duplicate handling

Optionally remove duplicates while preserving the first occurrence. This prevents accidental double assignment when a name appears twice in your list.

Copy & download

Share results instantly. Copy the generated teams to your clipboard or download them as a plain text file for easy distribution.

Privacy-friendly

Your list is processed on request and displayed directly as results. No accounts or integrations are required, making it ideal for quick, lightweight workflows.

Use Cases

• Classroom group work: Create discussion groups, lab partners, or project teams quickly.
• Workshops and training: Split attendees into breakout groups with minimal admin time.
• Sports and games: Build fair teams for football, basketball, volleyball, board games, or party games.
• Hackathons: Assign participants into teams or rotate groups between rounds.
• Team-building activities: Randomize groups to encourage new connections and reduce bias.
• Volunteer scheduling: Distribute people across stations or shifts as evenly as possible.
• Study sessions: Break a class list into study circles for peer-to-peer learning.

Whether you’re a teacher, coach, event organizer, or manager, randomized grouping saves time and helps ensure everyone gets a fair chance to work with different people.

Optimization Tips

Normalize names for cleaner output

Use consistent formatting (for example, “First Last”) and remove extra notes like “(late)” or “team lead”. Clean input makes the exported teams easier to read and reuse.

Pick the right number of teams

If you want more conversation and participation, create smaller teams. If you want efficiency and fewer groups to manage, create larger teams. For most activities, teams of 3–6 people work well.

Use duplicates removal carefully

If two different people share the same name, keep duplicates enabled. If your roster often contains copy-paste artifacts, enable duplicates removal to prevent accidental repeats.

FAQ

Planning Better Groups

Random teams are a great default, but you can get even better outcomes by thinking about the goal of the activity. If the goal is brainstorming, mixing departments and experience levels creates fresh perspectives. If the goal is speed, smaller teams reduce coordination costs. If the goal is practice or repetition, rotating teams between rounds helps participants meet more people and prevents cliques.

For educators, group size changes classroom dynamics. Pairs are excellent for quick peer review and low-stakes speaking practice. Groups of three encourage discussion without leaving someone out. Groups of four to five work well for project-based learning where roles can be shared: a facilitator, a note taker, a presenter, and a quality checker. When groups exceed six, some students naturally become quieter, so you may need clear roles or time-boxed turn taking.

For sports, fairness often matters more than novelty. If you run repeated sessions, you can paste a different ordering of names each day or run multiple generations and choose the one that “looks right”. If you’re organizing a casual match with mixed skill levels, you can also pre-sort your list (for example, strongest to newest) and then generate teams with “Keep original order” enabled. That method distributes the roster in sequence, which is a simple way to keep teams roughly even without having to do manual balancing.

Key Terms Explained

Round-robin assignment

Round-robin means the generator cycles through Team 1, Team 2, Team 3, and so on, placing one name into each team until it reaches the last team, then returning to Team 1. This produces near-equal team sizes automatically and spreads names across teams.

Strict random fill

Strict random fill shuffles the list and then fills Team 1 until it reaches the target size, then Team 2, and so on. This can be useful when you want a more “block” style output or when you are deliberately forming teams for separate stations or tables and want each station filled before moving on.

Uneven teams

When the number of people cannot be divided equally, some teams will have one extra member. In most activities this difference is negligible. If it matters, consider changing the number of teams or adding a “floater” role that rotates between teams.

Practical Grouping Ideas

Icebreakers

Generate teams, ask each group to find three things they share, then share one unique fact with the room. Random groups reduce the pressure of “choosing” and encourage new conversations.

Debate rounds

Create teams for a first round, then regenerate teams for the second round so participants meet different partners. Copy the results into your chat app and label rounds to keep things organized.

Workshop stations

If you run multiple stations, generate teams equal to the number of stations. After each time block, rotate teams to the next station. A clear team list makes the rotation smooth.

Volunteer staffing

For events with multiple tasks (registration, stage support, catering, cleanup), generate teams and assign each team to a task. If the workload differs, create fewer teams and use roles within the team.

Sports scrimmages

Use balanced teams for scrimmages and regenerate between games for variety. If you track results, you can ensure variety over the season by saving the downloaded team lists.

More Optimization Tips

Remove empty lines and extra separators

Copying from spreadsheets or chat logs can introduce blank lines or trailing commas. The tool ignores empty entries, but cleaning your list reduces surprises and makes outputs cleaner for sharing.

Use consistent separators for large rosters

For 50+ people, newline-separated lists are easiest to scan and edit. If you must use commas, consider switching to one-per-line before generating to quickly spot missing or duplicated entries.

Label teams with context

After generating, add a short label like “Team Alpha (Table 3)” or “Team 2 (Beginner)” before sharing. This small step prevents confusion when participants move between rooms or tables.