A Free Wheel of Names Alternative

How to use it

1. Copy your list acrossOpen your current wheel, select the entries, and paste them into the wheel above, one per line. A text or CSV file can be loaded instead.
2. Recreate the oddsAdd *2, *3 or any number after an entry that carried extra weight elsewhere. Pick a color set and, if you need it, remove-the-winner or no-repeats.
3. Spin and savePress SPIN, then use Copy link or Save on this device. The link holds the whole wheel, so no account is needed to bring it back.

Why people look for another wheel

The reasons are usually practical. A teacher wants a wheel that opens instantly on the classroom computer without a login. A streamer wants to run a giveaway in front of an audience that does not just take their word for the result. A parent wants something quiet on a phone, without a screen full of banners. Others simply lost a saved wheel after clearing browser data and would like a backup that does not depend on an account.

None of these reasons says that another site is bad. Wheel of Names is a large, established spinner, and for many people it does the job well. This page is for those whose needs lean the other way, and for those who want to try a second tool before settling. TwirlPick is independent and not affiliated with any site named here; all names belong to their owners.

Side by side, as of October 2026

The table below sets out what we could verify. For TwirlPick the facts come from the code that runs on this page. For the other two services the facts come from their own public pages as we read them in October 2026, and they may have changed since; check the source if a detail matters to you.

A few notes on how to read it. Pricing and limits on commercial sites change often, so treat the figures as a snapshot. Features are counted only when the site's own pages describe them. And a longer feature list is not automatically better: the right wheel is the one that covers the three or four things you actually do with it every week.

Where a cell says not listed, it means we did not find the feature on the site's public pages, not that it is certain not to exist.

Where the others are stronger

Be honest about trade-offs before you switch. The wheel on this page puts text on its slices and nothing else: no pictures and no uploaded sounds. Wheel of Names lets you add images to slices and offers a long list of sounds, and it has a public gallery where people share wheels. Picker Wheel offers modes such as elimination and accumulation, and cloud storage tied to an account.

Because TwirlPick keeps wheels on your device and in links, there is no cloud copy that follows you from a school laptop to your phone. You carry the link instead. For some people that is a feature, for others a nuisance, and it is worth deciding which camp you are in before you move a wheel that took an hour to build.

Scale is the other difference. The big spinners are built for very long lists and public sharing. This one is tuned for the common case of a few dozen entries on a screen that a room is watching, where readability and trust count for more than capacity.

What TwirlPick does differently

First, a result that can be tested. Every pick draws on cryptographic randomness mapped onto the wheel without modulo bias, each entry's odds appear beside the result, and a test page runs thousands of spins on demand. The reasoning is laid out in the guide on whether wheels are random. As of October 2026, Wheel of Names states on its FAQ that it uses a cryptographic generator and, as we read its pages, offers its own spin-count test; what TwirlPick adds is the odds on every result and, for giveaways, a draw that others can recompute.

Second, the verifiable draw. It fixes a fingerprint of your entries, then takes the winner from a future round of a public randomness beacon. Anyone with the proof link can reproduce the result on the verify page. It is built for giveaways, raffles and contests, where the audience cannot see inside your computer.

Third, the wheel lives in its link. Copy link carries every entry and setting after the # sign, which servers do not receive. There is no login to lose and no storage cap tied to a plan. Save on this device keeps a list of your wheels in the browser, and a single visit is enough for offline use.

Fourth, the surrounding tools. When a wheel is the wrong shape, there are separate pages for names, balanced teams, rotating groups, a class list with absent students, Secret Santa with private links, and a comment picker for giveaways.

Moving a wheel from another site

Copy the entries from your old wheel as plain text, one per line, and paste them into the entry box. Entries that sit in a file can be loaded with Import. Remove duplicates cleans up anything that came across twice, and Shuffle changes the order of slices without changing anyone's chance.

Weights do not travel automatically, because every site writes them differently. Note which entries had extra weight and add *2 or *3 yourself. Pictures cannot move across; swap each image for a short label. If the old wheel stored results, you will need to export them there, since this site starts a fresh history.

Do a trial run before the real event. Spin it five or six times with sound on, check the colors on the screen you will use, and try Present mode. It takes two minutes and avoids surprises in front of a class.

Which one fits which job

For a classroom, the questions are whether students can use it without logins, whether turns are fair, and whether the projector view is clean. TwirlPick suits that, with no repeats until everyone has had a go and a present mode that shows only the wheel. If your lesson needs pictures on the slices, a site with image support is the better fit.

For a giveaway, the question is trust. A wheel with a public proof link answers it best, and the giveaway picker applies that to several winners at once. Paid entry can turn a giveaway into an unlicensed lottery, so check local law and platform rules.

For a family decision or a game night, almost any wheel works, so choose by taste. If you like a quiet page and a link you can send to the group chat, try this one first, then compare.

Whichever you choose, a good habit is to keep your entries in a plain text note as well. Any wheel, on any site, can then be rebuilt in a minute, and you are never tied to one tool's storage, account or file format.

For a stream, there is no integration with any platform here: the wheel does not read chat, comments or follows. The address inside the Embed code works as a browser source in streaming software, and adding ?bg=none just before the # makes its background transparent; you spin it by interacting with the source. You can also share your screen with the wheel, or paste comments into the comment picker and show the proof link in chat.

A short checklist before you switch

Write down what you use the old wheel for. If the list is spinning, weights, remove-the-winner and a projector view, everything is here. If it includes pictures or shared galleries, you will lose those; putting a wheel on your own site is covered by the Embed button, which gives a plain iframe code.

Check how you open the wheel. If you rely on a saved account to reach it from several devices, plan how you will carry links instead: a bookmark synced by your browser, a note to yourself, or a message in a class chat all work. Test the link on a second device.

Think about the audience. If people watching will ask whether the result was fair, decide in advance whether the odds on screen are enough or whether you want a verifiable draw. Then try the wheel once with real entries, not placeholders, so you know how the names fit on the slices.

Finally, keep the old wheel until the new one has survived a real event. Switching tools mid-semester or mid-campaign is the riskiest moment, and a spare costs nothing. Many people end up using two wheels for different jobs, and that is a perfectly sensible outcome of a comparison like this one.