Spinner Wheel — Type Names, Spin, Draw a Winner
Winner
Entries
Entries: 6
With more than 24 entries the labels come off the wheel; the draw and the result are still exact.
This session
Winners will be listed here, newest first.
The winner is drawn by your browser's random source before the wheel starts to move — the spin is the show, not the decision.
Your list never leaves this page and no draw is sent anywhere. Closing the tab clears everything.
About Spinner Wheel
Put one entry on each line — names for a giveaway, chores nobody wants, places for lunch — and press Spin. The wheel exists for the moments when people are watching: a bare random number settles nothing at a party, but a wheel that everyone saw land is hard to argue with.
One thing here deserves to be said plainly, because almost no spinner page says it: the rotation does not decide anything. Before the wheel moves, the winner is already drawn from your browser's cryptographic random source, mapped onto your entries without bias — the tool discards raw values that would favor one end of the list rather than folding them in with a remainder. The wheel then turns exactly far enough to land on the entry that was drawn. Pages in this category usually let you believe the physics is choosing; it never is, here or anywhere else, so we put the fact on the screen instead of behind it.
The list itself is the probability. Slices are always equal, so a name that appears on two lines owns two slices and twice the chance — the counter above the wheel reports repeats instead of leaving them to sharp eyes. And for a real prize draw there is a remove winner switch: each drawn entry steps off the wheel, so the second and third spins go to someone new. Recent winners stay listed until you close the tab, and nothing you type leaves the page.
How to use it
- Type or paste your entries, one per line. Blank lines are skipped; you need at least two entries, and up to a hundred fit.
- Glance at the counter. It counts every line, and it calls out repeated lines separately, because a repeat is an extra chance.
- Press Spin. The wheel turns and settles on the winner, and the name is announced in text as well — if your system asks for reduced motion, the result simply appears.
- Turn on remove winner if each entry should win only once. The drawn entry leaves the list by itself, and the wheel redraws for the next spin.
- Check the session list for earlier winners. It keeps the recent draws on screen, so announcing first, second, and third place does not depend on memory.
Questions
Is the Spinner Wheel free, and do I need an account?
It is free and there is nothing to sign up for. The wheel, the draw, and the winner list all live in this one page in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, which also means there is no server copy of your list to worry about afterwards.
How is the winner actually chosen?
By your browser's cryptographic random source, before the wheel starts to move. The tool draws an index over your entries using rejection sampling, which throws away raw values that would make the front of the list slightly more likely, and then rotates the wheel to land on that entry. The animation is presentation. We state this because a spinning wheel strongly suggests that friction and momentum are deciding, and on every website ever built, they are not.
How is this different from a random number generator?
A number generator answers with a number, which is right when the entries already have numbers — raffle tickets, seat rows. This wheel takes the names themselves, so nobody has to keep a numbered list beside the screen, and it draws in a form an audience can watch. If your entries are numeric ranges rather than names, the number generator on this site is the better fit.
Can the same person win twice?
By default, yes — each spin is independent and the wheel has no memory, so last round's winner keeps the same slice this round. Turn on remove winner to change that: the drawn entry is taken off the wheel after each spin, which is how you run first, second, and third prize without repeats.
Does putting a name in twice really double its chance?
Yes. Every line gets a slice of identical size, so two lines means two slices. Length does not matter — a long name and a short one get the same slice — only the number of lines does. The counter above the wheel shows how many repeated lines are present, so a stacked list is visible to everyone before anyone spins.
Can I run a giveaway with this and will people trust it?
People who watched the spin, yes — that is what the wheel is for, and remove winner plus the session list handle several prizes cleanly. What no browser tool can give you is proof for someone who was not there, since the result exists only on your screen. For a public giveaway, spin where entrants can see it, on a call or a stream, and keep in mind that prize-draw rules differ by country.
Why did the labels disappear when I added a long list?
Past 24 entries the slices get too thin to hold readable text, so the wheel stops labeling them rather than printing letters nobody can read. The draw itself is unchanged — every line still has its equal slice — and the winner is announced by name in the result text, so nothing about the outcome depends on the labels.