Random Number Generator

A random number generator picks a number between two values with no pattern and no favorites. Set a minimum and a maximum, press the button, and you get a result nobody could have predicted: a raffle ticket, a seat number, a page of a book, a question from a numbered list or the order in which people present.

For ranges up to 1,000 values the number appears on a spinning wheel, which is perfect for a classroom screen or a live stream where everyone wants to watch the draw. For bigger ranges, a large counter rolls through digits for about a second before landing on the result. The default range is 1 to 100.

1. Type a minimum and a maximum, or tap a quick range such as 1–10 or 1–100.
2. Choose how many numbers you want, from 1 to 100.
3. Optionally switch off “No duplicates”, add exclusions or sort the result.
4. Press Generate and read your numbers, on the wheel or in the list.

The minimum and maximum can be any whole numbers from −1,000,000,000 to 1,000,000,000, so negative ranges such as −10 to 10 work too. If you type them the wrong way round, the generator simply swaps them and tells you.

Quick chips cover the ranges people use most: 1–6 for a die, 1–10, 1–16, 1–20, 1–50, 1–100 and 1–1000. The step option keeps only every nth value: with a step of 5 from 0 to 100, the 21 possible results are 0, 5, 10 and so on up to 100. The minimum, maximum and count are added to the page address, so you can bookmark a range or send it to a colleague.

Ask for up to 100 numbers per draw. “No duplicates” is on by default, which is what you want for raffles, seating plans or a quiz: each number can come out only once. If you request more numbers than the range contains, for example 12 unique numbers between 1 and 10, the count is reduced to what is possible and a message explains why.

Turn duplicates on when each draw should be independent, like rolling the same die several times. Repeats then show up more often than most people expect: among 10 numbers drawn from 1 to 100, at least two will match about 37% of the time. Tick “Sort” to get the result in ascending order, which makes long lists much easier to read aloud.

The exclusions field removes numbers before the draw. Separate single numbers with commas and use a hyphen for ranges: 5, 10-12, 40 takes out 5, 10, 11, 12 and 40. Use it to skip tickets that have already won, seat numbers of absent students or questions you covered last week. Excluded numbers never appear on the wheel, so the remaining ones share the odds equally.

Ticket raffles

Sold numbered tickets at a school fair? Set the range to the ticket numbers, ask for as many results as there are prizes and keep “No duplicates” on. If you would rather draw names than numbers, the raffle generator handles winners, alternates and a draw certificate.

Classroom draws

Give each student a number and spin to choose who answers, or draw a random page, exercise or problem number. For mental math, pair this page with the multiplication wheel.

Class bingo

Set 1 to 75, ask for one number at a time and add each called number to the exclusions, so nothing is called twice.

Games and streams

Pick a number between 1 and 20 for a guessing game, choose a random comment number in a giveaway, or replace a lost die with the 1–6 chip. For proper dice with totals, use the dice roller.

When a range holds more than 1,000 values, a wheel would have slices too thin to see, so the generator switches to a large rolling counter that settles on the result after about 1.2 seconds. The odds are identical either way: in a range of one million, every value has exactly one chance in a million. Use wide ranges for random IDs, sample sizes in a statistics lesson or a fair tie-breaker such as “closest guess to a number between 1 and 10,000”.

The numbers come from your browser’s cryptographic random generator, the same source used to create security keys, and not from a predictable formula. A rejection step removes the small bias that a simple “random modulo n” would create, so in the range 1 to 100 every number has exactly a 1% chance. Each draw is independent: a number that came up last time is just as likely next time when duplicates are allowed. See how this is checked on the wheel fairness page.