Spin the wheel – a free random picker that decides for you

What is a spin wheel, and when should you use one?

A spin wheel is a random picker with a face. You list the options, each option gets a slice, and a spin chooses one. It does the same job as drawing a name from a hat, but it is faster, it can be reused, and everyone watching can see that the result was not rigged.

People reach for a wheel in three kinds of moments. The first is the small decision that has stalled a conversation: where to eat, which film to watch, who takes the bins out. The second is fairness in a group, such as choosing a student to answer, a raffle winner or the order of presentations. The third is fun: party games, classroom rewards and dares, where the suspense of the spin is half the point.

Is this wheel really random?

Yes. When you press Spin, SpinDecide picks the winning slice first, using your browser's cryptographic random number generator (crypto.getRandomValues, the same source used for passwords and security keys). Only then does the wheel animate to a random point inside that slice. The animation cannot change the outcome, and the result never depends on how hard or how often you click.

Every slice has exactly the same chance unless you switch on weights. With three options each one wins about a third of the time; with ten options, about a tenth. We tested this with tens of thousands of simulated spins and the results matched the expected odds. You can read the full method, including why ordinary Math.random() was not good enough, in is a spin wheel really random?

What can this wheel do?

• Up to 200 options, each with its own colour. Labels shrink to fit and long names are shortened on the wheel, but the full name always appears in the result.
• Edit as text to paste a class list, a spreadsheet column or a list of ideas in one go.
• Remove the winner after each spin, which turns the wheel into a fair draw for giveaways, turn-taking and secret santa.
• Weights to make some slices bigger than others, for example to make a prize wheel with rare and common prizes.
• Results history for the session, which you can copy and paste into a message or a document.
• Full screen mode for classroom projectors and streams, plus an optional tick sound.
• Share links and embed code, so the same wheel opens on any phone, or sits on your own blog or class page.

Nothing is uploaded. Your options stay in your browser unless you create a share link, and even then the options travel inside the link itself rather than being stored on our server.

Popular ways to use a decision wheel

If you are here to settle one question, the yes or no wheel and the decision wheel are the quickest route. Teachers tend to start with the classroom name picker, which removes each student after they are picked so nobody is called twice. For giveaways and raffles, the giveaway picker explains how to draw a winner in a way your audience will trust.

At home, the what to eat wheel and the movie picker end the nightly debate, and the chore wheel shares out jobs without arguments. If you only need a number, the number wheel builds any range for you, and the randomizers section has a coin flip, dice, a magic 8-ball and a team generator.

Wheel, coin or dice: which should you use?

A coin and a two-slice wheel give identical odds. The wheel's advantage is that it keeps working when a third option turns up, and that the options are written on it, so nobody argues afterwards about which side meant what.

A tip for people who cannot decide

The Danish poet and scientist Piet Hein summed up a neat trick for indecision in his short poem A Psychological Tip: spin a penny, and notice how you feel while it is in the air. If you catch yourself hoping for one side, you already have your answer. A wheel works the same way. Spin it, and if the result disappoints you, go with the other option. We wrote more about why this works, and about decision fatigue, in why letting a wheel decide can be the smart choice.