Balanced Team Generator
Teams with skill or attribute balance.
Built and maintained by Paul Clark, Redmoon Software · Last checked
Drop in a list of people, tag each one with an attribute, and the tool sorts them into teams that stay even across those tags. Coaches, teachers, and event organizers use it to avoid stacking all the strong players or all of one group on a single side, so every team starts on roughly equal footing.
List. Enter each person on a line with a tag in brackets, like "Sam [level2]".
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Click Build balanced teams to see a result.
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How it works
- List. Enter each person on a line with a tag in brackets, like "Sam [level2]".
- Options. Set how many teams you want in the Options panel.
- Build. Click "Build balanced teams" to split everyone evenly by tag.
About the Balanced Team Generator
Tags in square brackets
Add a tag to a name in square brackets — Ana [advanced], Ben [beginner] — and the tool distributes each tag group evenly across teams rather than distributing the class as one undifferentiated pool. Names with no tag are treated as one group of their own.
The mechanism is straightforward: within each tag, members are shuffled and then dealt round-robin across the teams. So four advanced students across two teams give two each, and the same happens independently for every other tag. That is what produces teams with a comparable mix rather than teams where all the strong readers landed together.
Where the evenness breaks down
Round-robin dealing is even when a tag divides by the number of teams and slightly uneven when it does not. Five advanced students across two teams necessarily gives three and two, and the surplus goes to whichever team the shuffle put first — random, but not compensated for across tags.
That means several tags each with an odd count can pile their surplus onto the same team. With three tags of five across two teams, one team can end up with three of each. Look at the teams before you use them; the fix is a manual swap, which takes ten seconds.
What a tag can usefully be
- Skill or reading level, the most common use, and the one that makes mixed-ability grouping fast.
- Language, so each team has someone who can translate.
- Year group or class, for cross-class activities.
- Anything you want spread rather than clustered — the tool does not care what the tag means.
Frequently asked questions
How do I tag people?
Put the tag in square brackets after the name, like "Alice [skilled]" or "Bob [boy]".
What does "balanced" actually mean?
Each team ends up with roughly the same count of each tag, so attributes like skill level or category are spread evenly.
Is the split random or fixed?
It's random within the balance rules, generated with the Web Crypto API, so you get a fair, fresh draw each time you build teams.
Does my roster get uploaded?
No. The tool runs entirely in your browser and works offline — your names and tags never leave your device.
Related randomizers
Further reading
- Short-handed? The position assigner loses the same slots every time
The Random Sports Position Assigner shuffles your players, never the positions. So when eight kids show up for an eleven-a-side lineup, which slots come back empty is not random at all — and for soccer it means nobody up front. Here is the fill order for each sport and how to read a short lineup.
- A snake draft evens the picks, not the totals
The Weighted Team Generator drafts serpentine — best player to team one, next to team two, then back again. It is a good heuristic and it is not an optimiser. Here is when it lands short, why re-rolling will not save you, and what to do instead.
- Build balanced teams that don't turn into a blowout
A purely random split can dump all your strongest players on one side. Here's how a balanced team generator spreads people evenly by skill, level, or any tag you choose — so the teams are fair and the game stays close.
- Picking random teams without starting a fight
Randomising teams sounds easy: shuffle, deal, done. In practice you need to think about balance, locked groups, varying sizes, and the friend who always ends up on the same side. Here's how we handle it.