Running it on a wheel in front of the room, or on a shared screen, turns the result from an announcement into something the entrants saw happen.
Paste your entries above and spin. Below you will find how to handle duplicate entries, how to draw several winners, and how to keep a record of the draw afterwards.
What is a raffle winner wheel?
A raffle winner wheel is a free spinner holding your list of entries. Spin it and it lands on one name, picking a winner in public rather than privately, so everyone entered can see the draw take place.
The visibility is the entire product.
A random number generator picks just as fairly. What it does not do is let forty people watch the result arrive, which is what stops anyone asking how the winner was chosen.
How do you run a draw?
Paste your entry list, check it over on screen, then spin. One name wins. For several winners, turn on remove after pick first and spin again, so the same entry can never come up twice.
Three steps:
- Paste every entry, one per line
- Show the full list on screen before spinning
- Spin, and remove each winner if you need more than one
Before you spin, check these
| Check | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Duplicate entries | A name listed twice has double the chance, which is either your rule or a mistake |
| Spelling variants | "Jon Smith" and "John Smith" may be the same person entered twice |
| Entry count visible | Entrants should be able to count the list and see themselves in it |
| Number of winners | Decide before the first spin, not after seeing who won |
| Removal setting on | Required whenever you are drawing more than one winner |
What about duplicate entries?
Decide whether duplicates are a rule or a mistake, then act before you spin. A name appearing twice wins twice as often, which is correct for a raffle selling multiple tickets and wrong for a one-entry-per-person giveaway.
Both setups are legitimate and the failure is not choosing.
For one entry per person, clean the list first. For paid tickets, leave the duplicates in, because that is precisely what the buyer paid for and the wheel handles it correctly on its own.
Two ways to run a ticketed draw:
- Enter each ticket holder once per ticket bought
- Enter each name once and weight the slice by ticket count
How do you draw several winners?
Turn on remove after pick and spin once per prize. Each winner leaves the wheel, so nobody wins twice and the draw runs down cleanly from first prize to last in front of everyone watching.
Announce the number of winners before the first spin rather than during.
Deciding to add a third prize after two names are out looks like fixing the draw, even when it is a genuine change of plan. Say how many there are at the start.
How do you prove the draw was fair?
Show the list, spin in public, and keep the record. A draw is trusted when the entrants can see the full entry list, watch the spin land, and check afterwards that the list matched what they expected.
None of that requires anyone to trust the software.
Three things worth keeping:
- A screenshot of the entry list before the first spin
- A recording or screenshot of each result as it lands
- The spin history, which shows every result in order
For how the draw itself works, see how our randomness works .
Is the raffle wheel random?
Yes. Every entry left on the wheel has exactly the same chance on every spin. The draw comes from your browser's cryptographic random source, and duplicates change the odds only because they are extra entries.
Removing a winner changes who is eligible, not the odds between whoever remains.
What other picker wheels are there?
Picker wheels differ in what goes on the slices and in how the result gets used afterwards. For any draw with real prizes attached, the removal setting matters more than anything else on the page.
- Wheel of names multiple winners for drawing several at once
- Wheel of names without repeats for the removal setting in detail
- Random number wheel for drawing ticket numbers rather than names
- Wheel of names for the general picker