Secret Santa name picker
Picking names out of a bowl needs everybody in the same room at the same time, which almost never happens. This does the picking once, online, and hands each person their own result privately.
1. Your group
2. Participants
0 participants · At least 3 names. You can add yourself too.
3. Who should not draw each other (optional)
For couples, siblings, or people who always end up with each other.
4. How to share the links
I will share the links myself
You get one private link per person to send on WhatsApp, Messenger or anywhere else. No email addresses needed.
Email everyone — Add an email after a name (Nora, nora@mail.com) and we send that person their link automatically.
One pick, no repeats
Every name is picked exactly once, so each person gives one gift and receives one gift. Nobody picks their own name – the classic bowl problem that forces the whole group to start over – and the pick is generated server-side with a cryptographic random source.
Remote and hybrid groups
Half the team at home and half in the office is the normal case now, and it is exactly where a bowl fails. Everyone gets a link instead: on email if you have addresses, or as a single copyable message for Slack, Teams or WhatsApp if you would rather not collect them.
People open their link whenever they get to it. The organizer page shows who has and who has not, which turns chasing the group into two direct messages.
Set the rules before you pick
Add a budget range, an exchange date and a short note, and mark any pairs that should never match. All of it rides along on each person's link, so the answer to "how much are we spending again?" is in the same place as their name.
The organizer can play
Because no page shows the whole list, the person setting it up is just another participant. That is deliberate: the most common complaint about running Secret Santa is that the organizer always knows too much.
FAQ
- Can I pick names for a group that is not together?
- Yes – that is what it is for. Each person opens their own link, wherever they are.
- Can someone pick their own name?
- No. The draw structurally prevents it.
- What if someone loses their link?
- Resend it from the organizer page. The link keeps showing the same result.
- Is a login needed?
- No account, no app, no cookies wall. Names in, links out.
- What happens to the names afterwards?
- They are deleted automatically 60 days after the exchange date.
Want a plain random name draw instead? Use draw names online