Secret Santa Generator

Most Secret Santa sites want an email address for every participant before they will tell you anything. That is fine for a large, formal exchange, but it is a lot of friction for six coworkers or a family group chat. This page does the draw locally and hands you the results straight away, with no account, no invitation emails, and no waiting for people to confirm.

Everything happens in the page you are looking at. The names you type are not uploaded or stored. We only record that the tool was used and how many people were in the draw. Close the tab and they are gone, which is also why the tool cannot remind you of anything later. Copy the links before you leave.

A valid Secret Santa assignment is one where every person gives exactly one gift and receives exactly one gift, nobody gets themselves, and no exclusion is broken. The tool first checks whether such an assignment can exist at all. That check is exact, so you will never sit through endless retries on an impossible setup.

When an assignment exists, it shuffles everyone using random numbers from your browser's crypto API and accepts the first shuffle that follows every rule. Repeating until a rule-abiding shuffle appears is what keeps the choice unbiased, because no valid arrangement is favored over another. A well-known shortcut, where each person picks from the remaining names, quietly skews results and can get stuck on the last person drawing themselves. This avoids that.

A reveal link looks like this page's address followed by a # and a block of letters. That block is the person's name, their recipient, and your budget, date, and note, packed into text. Because it sits after the #, the browser keeps it to itself and never includes it in a request. When someone opens their link, the page reads it, shows a 'tap to reveal' button, and then removes it from the address bar so it does not linger in the URL.

Two honest limits. First, the link is encoded, not encrypted, so anyone who gets it can decode it, and a person who forwards theirs has shared their secret. Second, the organizer's screen, the CSV download and the printed slips show everything unless you use sealed mode, and even then the links themselves contain the matches. Links are not encrypted or signed: anyone who has a person's link can see that person's match, and anyone can build a link with a made-up match, so only share each link with its recipient. If you need a draw that even a determined organizer cannot see, use a service built around that promise, or have a neutral friend run this page for you.

• Pick a budget before drawing and put it in the budget box so it shows on every link and slip. Arguments about spending are the most common way a good exchange goes sour.
• Use exclusions for partners and anyone who gave to the same person last year, then keep the group at five or more people so there is room to satisfy them.
• Add a date and a note. 'Bring it wrapped to the Thursday lunch' saves a dozen follow-up messages.
• Send links individually rather than posting them in a group chat. A link in a shared thread is visible to everybody in it.
• Tell people to open their link on a phone or laptop they trust, since the page remembers the reveal for that browser tab until it is closed.

Once the matches are out, the fun is the exchange. If your group plays a swap game rather than opening gifts one by one, the white elephant gift exchange tool on this site makes the numbered turn order. For a team celebration you can run a quick poll for the group's favorite holiday film, or set up a ShuffleTurn board so everyone sees whose turn it is to unwrap, with an optional timer. All of that is free to try and none of it is required to use the draw above.