Bracket Seeder

What it does

The Bracket Seeder turns a list of participants into a random first-round draw for a single-elimination tournament. Paste one name per line; the tool shuffles the field and pairs it into matches, giving a BYE to the odd participant out when the field size isn’t even. Seeded draws are exactly reproducible — the fairness can be demonstrated after the fact.

Common use cases

• Sports and esports brackets — an unbiased draw for club tournaments, office foosball, or ranked ladders.
• Game nights — Mario Kart, chess, or card-game brackets in seconds.
• Classroom competitions — debate pairings and spelling-bee draws that can be re-derived if anyone questions them.
• Repeatable demos — a stable example bracket for slides and testing tournament software.

Settings

• Participants — one per line; blank lines are ignored. The draw pairs line 1-vs-line 2 of the shuffled order, and so on.
• Seed — the same seed and participant list always reproduce the same matchups. Change the seed to redraw.

Privacy note

The draw runs locally in your browser — your participant list is never uploaded, and it’s treated as private input. This is a seeded randomizer for fair, repeatable draws, not a security tool or a regulated lottery mechanism.

FAQ

What does BYE mean? With an odd number of participants, one competitor has no first-round opponent and advances automatically. The BYE lands based on the shuffle, so it’s assigned fairly.

Does the draw consider skill or rankings? No — it’s a pure random draw, which is the fair default for casual play. If you need skill-based seeding (1 plays lowest seed, etc.), order that by hand; use this tool when randomness is the requirement.

How do I prove the draw was fair? Publish the seed alongside the participant list. Anyone can re-run the draw with the same inputs and get the identical bracket.