How to pick winners from a list without repeats

Put the list in the name picker, set how many winners you need and draw once. No line of the list can be drawn twice, and the result can be sent as a link that replays the same draw for anyone. The details below keep the draw clean and easy to check.

1. Clean the list first

The picker treats every line as one entry. If the same person appears on two lines, they have two entries and could even be drawn twice as two separate lines. The list panel tells you how many duplicate names it sees. Press Remove duplicates if each person should have a single entry, or leave them in if extra entries are part of your rules.

You can paste up to 5,000 lines in one go, for example a column copied from a spreadsheet. Blank lines and stray spaces are removed for you.

2. Decide the number of winners and alternates

Names come out in the order they are drawn, numbered from 1. That makes alternates easy: if you need three winners and two reserves, draw five and treat numbers 4 and 5 as the reserves, in that order. Drawing them all at once is better than drawing again later, because nobody can then wonder whether the second draw was repeated.

3. Draw once

Each draw uses a new seed taken from your browser’s cryptographic random numbers and a Fisher–Yates shuffle, so every possible set of winners, in every order, is equally likely. Our automated tests draw 3 names from 30 a hundred thousand times with fixed seeds and check that every name is picked equally often and is equally likely to come first.

4. Share the result link

Copy result link creates an address containing the list, the number drawn and the seed. Whoever opens it sees the same winners in the same order, marked as the same result as the link. If someone edits the list inside the link, it becomes a different draw and the changed list is plain to see.

Keep in mind that the link contains the names, so send it only where those names may be seen.

What a link cannot prove

The link shows that the result was not changed after the draw. It cannot show whether the draw was run several times before one link was chosen. Two habits close that gap:

• Post the final list and the rules (how many winners, one draw only) before drawing.
• Draw where others can watch, such as a shared screen, or ask someone with no stake in the outcome to press the button.

Other ways to draw from the same list

The Slips mode hands every person a folded slip with a set number of winning slips, which suits groups that want to open their own. Order puts the whole list in a random sequence. The wheel picks one name at a time with Remove and spin again, and uses the same list without retyping.