Who's in
One pair per line, names separated by a comma. Works both ways.The draw
Pass the phone round: each person taps their own name to see who they're buying for, then taps again to hide it.
A Secret Santa generator does what the hat can’t: it guarantees nobody draws their own name. With eight people pulling names from a hat, there’s a 63% chance at least one person gets themselves and you have to start again. Here, type the names, list any couples who shouldn’t draw each other, and press Draw names. Then pass the phone round. Each person taps their own name to see who they’re buying for, and taps again to hide it. It’s free, and nothing is sent anywhere.
How the Secret Santa generator draws names
It shuffles the list with your browser’s secure random generator and checks the result: nobody on themselves, and no excluded pair together. If the shuffle breaks a rule, it shuffles again until one doesn’t. That keeps every valid draw equally likely, which a “fix the clashes by swapping” method doesn’t.
The hat-draw figure is one of the neatest results in probability. The chance that a random draw has nobody on themselves gets close to 1 divided by e, about 36.8%, once there are more than a handful of people. So whether it’s 6 people or 60, the hat fails about 63% of the time.
| People | Chance the hat draw fails |
|---|---|
| 3 | 66.7% |
| 4 | 62.5% |
| 5 | 63.3% |
| 8 or more | 63.2% |
Exclusions and limits
Put pairs who shouldn’t draw each other on separate lines, like “Sam, Priya”. It works both ways. Partners, flatmates, or the two people who did each other last year. With lots of exclusions in a small group, there might be no draw that works. If that happens you’ll be told, so take one or two out.
The spending limit is just a reminder that shows with the draw. £10, £20, “something homemade”: whatever your group agreed.
Running it at work or with family
- In person: open the page on one phone, draw, and hand it round. Nobody but you sees “Show all”.
- Organiser only: draw, press Copy list, and send each person their name privately.
- Draw again if someone drops out. The old pairs are replaced.
Picking one name for something else, like who hosts Christmas? Use the random name picker or the wheel of names.