Tournament bracket maker

How to use it

1. Entrants. Type or paste the names, one per line, strongest first. No ranking? Choose Random draw: the order is shuffled from a draw number shown on the page, so anyone with the same list and number gets the same draw. To move one team, use Reorder seeds.
2. Format. Single elimination is one loss and out. Double elimination gives every team a second chance through a losers’ bracket. Swiss plays a fixed number of rounds with nobody knocked out.
3. Play. Click a name in the bracket to send it through, or click the game number to type a score. The Games tab lists every game in order with score boxes, which is quickest on a phone.
4. Share and print. The edit link holds the whole bracket; keep it. Send the view-only link to players. Print the bracket blank, with names only, or with results so far, on Letter, A4, Legal or Tabloid.

Want a sheet to fill in by hand? The printable brackets page has blank single- and double-elimination brackets from 4 to 64 teams, including sizes with byes such as 12 teams.

Seeding and byes

A knockout bracket halves the field every round, so it needs a power of two lines: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 or 128. Any other number of entrants is rounded up and the spare lines become byes, free passes into the second round. The number of byes is next power of two − entrants, and they go to the top seeds, which is what nearly every competition does.

Positions follow the standard seeding order, made by replacing each seed s with the pair (s, 2k + 1 − s) each time the bracket doubles to 2k lines. The seeds in every first-round game add up to the bracket size plus one (1 v 16, 8 v 9), seeds 1 and 2 are in opposite halves, 1 to 4 in different quarters, and so on, so the strongest teams cannot meet until late. Byes are never drawn: a team with a bye simply starts in round two, and later games say “Winner of M5” until that game is played.

How double elimination works here

Every team starts in the winners’ bracket. Lose once and you drop into the losers’ bracket; lose twice and you are out. The losers’ bracket alternates two kinds of round: one where its survivors play each other, and one where they meet the teams just knocked down from the winners’ bracket. Those drop-ins are fed in reverse order, so a team does not meet the opponent that just beat them straight away.

The winners’ bracket champion meets the losers’ bracket champion in the grand final. With the bracket reset switched on (the usual rule), if the losers’ side wins, both teams have one loss and the final is played again. Switch it off for a single grand final. Final placings: champion, runner-up, losers’ final loser third, the loser before that fourth, then shared places by the losers’ round a team went out in (5th–6th, 7th–8th, 9th–12th…).

How Swiss pairing works here

Round 1 pairs the top half of the seeds against the bottom half (with 8 players, 1 v 5, 2 v 6, 3 v 7, 4 v 8). From round 2, players are listed by points, then seed, and the highest unpaired player meets the next one down they have not played; if that would leave someone without a legal opponent, the pairing backs up and tries the next choice. With an odd number, the lowest-placed player who has not had a bye sits out and scores a point. Standings use points and then Buchholz. The number of rounds is capped at half the field, which is the most that can always be paired without a rematch; the default is enough rounds for a single unbeaten player. This is the simple “by standing” method many clubs use, not the full FIDE Dutch system with colour allocation.

Bracket sizes at a glance

Saving, sharing and privacy

The bracket is written into the part of the link after the #, compressed by your browser. Browsers never send that part of a link to a web server, so this site does not see or store your bracket, and there is no account to create. Measured with this version: 64 entrants with realistic team names and every score entered make an edit link of about 850 characters; double elimination with all 126 scores about 1,000. The export button saves the same data as a small file you can import later.

When a bracket is the wrong tool

Single elimination is quick and harsh: half the field plays once. Where people have travelled to play, guarantee more games with double elimination or Swiss, or play a round-robin schedule in pools and send the top teams into a knockout. The league manager runs a whole season in one link and can seed a playoff bracket here straight from its table.

Some competitions re-seed after every round, or keep teams from the same club apart early. Neither is done automatically; reorder the seeds by hand if your rules need it.

Page last reviewed 30 September 2026.