What is a Raffle Generator?
Are you thinking about running a raffle? Raffles are a great way to get people involved in fundraisers, social media giveaways, or office fun. But picking a winner fairly and easily? That’s where a raffle generator comes in handy.
These digital helpers are designed to randomly pick winners from a list of names or numbers, eliminating guesswork and potential bias. They ensure that your draw is legit and save you the hassle of pulling names out of a hat.
This article, updated as of April 2025, discusses raffle generators. We’ll examine the top 6 online raffle generator tools available right now. Stick around for key insights into making your next raffle a smooth sail.
Top 6 Online Raffle Generator Tools
Finding a raffle generator online is easy these days. With a quick search, many options pop up, each offering different bells and whistles. Some are quite simple, and others are packed with features for complex drawings.
Choosing the right one depends on what you need—are you running a massive fundraiser or a quick Instagram contest? No worries—we’ve sifted through the options to bring you six choices for generating raffle winners in 2025, helping you find the right tool for your online contests.
1. Wheel of Names
The first one is Wheel of Names, which is known for its fun visual approach. You pop your list of names into the tool, creating a colorful spinning wheel. Click to spin, and watch it land on a random winner. It’s popular for classrooms and events because it’s straightforward and adds a bit of showmanship to the draw.
You can tweak the look and feel – change colors, add sounds, adjust how long it spins, and even put your logo or a custom image in the middle or background. It’s great for live streams or in-person events where you want to build excitement. They also take privacy seriously, are GDPR and CCPA compliant, and run on renewable energy, which is a nice touch.
As of 2025, Wheel of Names has facilitated over 207 million spins, proving its popularity. Keep in mind that large lists might need manual entry, and you need an internet connection.
2. Comment Picker
Comment Picker might be your best friend if your raffle is on social media and based on comments. This tool is built specifically to pick winners from YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram comments. You link your post, and it pulls in the comments, using a certified random algorithm to pick a winner fairly. It saves a lot of time compared to manually scrolling through hundreds or thousands of comments.
Comment Picker offers some neat filtering options. You can automatically remove duplicate users, filter comments by specific hashtags or keywords, and choose multiple winners. Once the winner is picked, it displays them instantly and lets you download or share the results – handy for proving the draw was legit.
3. Spin the Wheel
Spin the Wheel, also known as the Picker Wheel, is another visual spinner tool, much like Wheel of Names. It offers a free, simple way to make random selections by spinning a virtual wheel. Input your list of names or numbers, customize the wheel’s appearance to match your branding or event theme, and spin away. It’s designed to be intuitive and make the selection process engaging.
A handy feature is removing a winner’s name after they’re selected, ensuring they can’t be picked again in subsequent draws if needed. If you create an account, you can save your customized wheels for later use, which is great if you run regular raffles.
You can even embed the wheel on certain websites like WordPress or Shopify. While it might lack some of the advanced filtering of Comment Picker, its ease of use and visual appeal make it a strong contender, especially for live events or simple online draws.
4. Viralsweep Random Name Picker
Viralsweep offers a suite of tools for running digital promotions, and their Random Name Picker is a straightforward, free option for drawing winners. You can paste a list of names directly into the tool – it supports up to 20,000 lines via pasting, or you can upload a CSV for larger lists.
The tool is versatile; you can use names, numbers, emails, whatever you’ve collected as entries. It doesn’t automatically remove duplicates from your input list, so you’ll need to clean it beforehand if duplicates aren’t allowed.
5. Gigacalculator Random Name Picker
Gigacalculator provides another solid, web-based Random Name Picker. You can specify how many names you want to draw, which can be up to 1,000 at once. The tool then uses a cryptographically secure random number generator to ensure each name has an equal chance of being selected, making the draw unbiased.
This picker is helpful for various scenarios, from choosing prize winners for a charity raffle to randomly assigning people to teams. It can handle drawing multiple winners easily, and you can copy the list of winners directly from the results.
The creators assure users that the randomization is statistically tested for fairness, offering peace of mind that the selection is genuinely random. It’s a simple, effective tool for anyone needing to draw one or more names from a list without any complex setup.
6. RANDOM.ORG
For those who are serious about randomness, RANDOM.ORG offers a True Random Number Service. Unlike pseudo-random number generators found in most computer programs, RANDOM.ORG bases its numbers on atmospheric noise, which they argue provides ‘true’ randomness rather than algorithmically generated sequences. They offer various tools, including a list randomizer and number generators, perfect for raffles.
You can use their list randomizer by pasting your list of names; the tool will shuffle the list into a truly random order. The top name can be declared the winner(s). Alternatively, you can assign each entry a number and use the number generator to pick winning numbers within your range.
Is There a Free Raffle Generator With Multiple Entries?
Finding a free raffle generator that can handle multiple entries per person is possible, though how they manage it varies. This is a common need, especially for raffles where participants can earn extra chances to win by buying more tickets or completing bonus actions in a giveaway. Running a fair draw when folks have different numbers of entries is crucial.
Some simpler free tools might require you to manually enter a person’s name multiple times into the list, once for each entry they have. So, if George has 5 entries, you’d list ‘George’ five times before hitting the ‘draw’ button. This works fine for smaller raffles, but can get tedious if you have hundreds of entries.
Other tools might offer more advanced features, sometimes as part of a paid plan, that specifically handle weighted entries. They use algorithms where you can assign a ‘weight’ that is the number of entries to each name, and the tool calculates the probabilities accordingly during the random selection. This is much slicker for larger or more complex drawings.
Some free options that touch on handling multiple entries or related features include:
- Raffle Name: This app supports multiple tickets per individual, potentially simplifying the process.
- Comment Picker: While the free version focuses on picking unique commenters, paid plans often offer advanced filtering, which might include options relevant to multiple entries or bonus entries.
- RandomPicker: This service explicitly mentions weighted drawings as a feature, allowing participants with more tickets to have a higher chance. Keep an eye on the limits of their free plan, though, as it’s capped at 100 entries.
- Wheel-based pickers: Generally require you to manually input each entry as a separate item on the wheel.
Where to Get a Random Raffle Generator?
A random raffle generator is essentially software – could be a website, an app, or part of a bigger platform – that uses an algorithm or some other method to pick one or more winners from a list of participants completely by chance. The key is ‘random,’ ensuring the draw is fair and unbiased, taking human error or
Finding these generators is straightforward, as they’re available through several channels:
- Dedicated Websites: Loads of websites offer free random name or number picking tools. Examples we’ve already touched on include Wheel of Names, Gigacalculator, RANDOM.ORG, Comment Picker, and AppSorteos.
- Mobile Apps: There are dedicated raffle apps if you prefer doing things on your phone or tablet. Apps like Raffle Name, Easily Create: Manage Raffles, and RafflesNow are designed for mobile use. They can be handy for managing raffles on the go, especially for smaller events or social media contests run directly from your device. App store ratings can give you a hint about user satisfaction—several mentioned apps hover around 4.5 to 4.7 out of 5 stars.
- Social Media Contest Platforms: Many platforms designed to help run social media promotions include built-in winner selection tools. Comment Picker is a prime example focused on social comments. Others like Gleam or Rafflecopter provide embeddable widgets for websites and include random winner drawing as a core feature, simplifying the process if you already use them to collect entries. These platforms help ensure fairness in your giveaways.
- Fundraising Platforms: Nonprofits often run fundraising raffles, and platforms like Zeffy, GalaBid, and RallyUp cater specifically to this need. They often combine tools for selling raffle tickets online with features for drawing winners, providing an all-in-one solution for charity raffles, including specialized types like 50/50 draws. Some platforms even offer their services for free to registered nonprofits.
- Spreadsheet Software: For the DIY crowd with some spreadsheet know-how, you can use functions like
=RANDBETWEEN()in Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. If you assign each entry a row, you can generate a random row number to pick your winner. It requires manual setup, but it is a free and transparent method if you’re comfortable with spreadsheets.
The Best Online Raffle Tickets Generator in 2025
Creating tickets for your raffle shouldn’t add stress to your event planning. Forget fiddling with clunky design software or messy handwriting.
Nowadays, plenty of online tools are designed specifically to help you whip up professional-looking raffle tickets quickly and easily, whether you need digital e-tickets, printable stubs, or both.
These generators often let you add important details, customize designs, and even include security features like unique numbers or QR codes.
Fundraisers and event organizers have several good options for generating raffle tickets online. Here are a few worth checking out:
- Ticket Generator: This service creates tickets for various events, including raffles. You can design tickets and add details like event information, prize descriptions, contact information, and terms. They often include features like QR codes for security and validation at the event entrance, potentially doubling the ticket as an entry pass. You can upload your own design or use their templates.
- Canva: While not exclusively a raffle ticket tool, Canva’s massive library of templates includes options for raffle tickets. Its user-friendly drag-and-drop interface makes customization simple, allowing you to add logos, change colors, and input all necessary text and numbering. It’s great for creating visually appealing printable tickets.
- Zeffy: Primarily a nonprofit fundraising platform, Zeffy includes raffle ticket generation as part of its free service. It can automatically create customizable e-tickets, often with unique numbers and even QR codes, streamlining online and in-person sales for registered nonprofit organizations.
- GalaBid: Another platform often used for fundraising events, GalaBid offers quick setup for raffle campaigns, including immediate digital ticket issuance via email or text upon purchase. This integrates ticket generation directly into the sales process for online raffles.
- Eventgroove: This platform provides tools for event management, including options for creating and selling both online and traditional printed raffle tickets, sometimes offering features to help combine both types in a single event.
Raffle Generators: Key Insights
So, we’ve covered the essentials of raffle generators—the top 6 tools for picking winners randomly, whether free options can handle multiple entries per person, where to find these handy random pickers, and even how to generate the tickets themselves for 2025.
Choosing the right tool depends on your specific needs, from simple name draws to full-scale fundraising campaigns.
Here are a few quick takeaways and interesting bits:
- Some random name pickers like Wheel of Names have seen huge usage, with over 207 million spins.
- Free plans often have limitations; for instance, RandomPicker’s free tier caps entries at 100.
- Mobile apps for raffle draws are popular, with several achieving App Store ratings around 4.7/5 stars.
- Platforms like Zeffy offer completely free raffle hosting, including ticket generation, specifically for nonprofits in the US and Canada.
- Compliance matters! Always check local regulations regarding raffles, as rules can vary significantly by location, e.g., requiring in-person draws or specific handling for 50/50 raffles. If you’re looking for contests to enter, check out this list of international giveaways.
Remember, this information is current as of our last update in April 2025. Happy raffling.