Winner Picker FAQ
Answers to the questions that come up most often about Winner Picker, the online draw service that picks winners at random from a list you provide. For the mechanics behind each draw, see how it works.
The draw service
How does the Winner Picker work?
Winner Picker is a random draw service. You provide a list of entries, choose how many winners you want, and it picks them at random. Every draw is published on a permanent link that you can share, together with the file the winners were drawn from, so the result stands on its own as a record of the draw.
How many entries can a drawing have?
Up to 2,000,000 rows, with a maximum file size of 50 MB. You can pick any number of winners from one up to the number of entries.
Do I have to upload a file?
No. For a short list you can paste the entries straight into the form, one per line, up to 10,000 of them. If you copy a block of cells out of a spreadsheet, the columns are kept and the first line is read as the header. Commas are not treated as column separators when pasting, so a list written as “Lastname, Firstname” stays one entry per line. For comma separated data, or for anything longer, upload a file.
What does the file need to look like?
A CSV file whose first row is the header with your column names. Every row after that counts as one entry. The columns are yours to choose: names, email addresses, ticket numbers, customer numbers, or several of them together. The winners table shows every column from your file, so the winners are identified exactly the way your list identifies them.
What does a drawing cost?
Drawings are priced by the size of the list, starting at 2.50 EUR for up to 500 entries and reaching 1,000 EUR for a list of two million. The number of winners never changes the price, and test drawings are free. The full ladder is on the pricing page.
Is the source code available?
Not at the moment. The method is described in full in how it works, including the exact algorithms used.
The randomness
How does the draw service choose winners?
Each drawing builds a fresh random seed that mixes randomness from the NIST Randomness Beacon, a public source produced by quantum-physical processes, with fresh entropy from the server. That seed drives a cryptographically secure generator, which is used to select the winners and then to shuffle them before places are assigned. Every result page states which seed source was used.
How can you be sure the numbers are really random?
Strictly speaking, no generator can be proven random. What can be described is the method, and that is what we publish: the entropy source, the generator construction, the way numbers are drawn without bias, and the algorithms used to select and rank winners. Every entry has the same chance of being selected, and every winner has the same chance of landing in any place, regardless of where it sits in your file.
Can I reproduce a drawing later?
No. The seed is generated fresh for each drawing and is not published, so a completed drawing cannot be replayed. Running the same list again produces a different result.
Running a drawing
How do I run a drawing?
Sign in, start a new drawing, and follow the steps: give it a name, upload your CSV file, confirm the number of entries the file contains, choose how many winners you want, and choose whether the result is public, private or a test. The winners appear as soon as the drawing completes.
Can the same person appear more than once?
Yes. Every row counts as one entry, so if the same identifier appears on three rows, it has three chances. Nothing is de-duplicated, because a list with repeated entries is often deliberate, for example when entrants earn extra chances.
Can the same person win more than one place?
Yes, if they are listed more than once. Each row is treated as its own entry, so an identifier listed several times can be picked for several places. If you do not want that, make sure each entrant appears exactly once in your file before you upload it.
What should I use to identify entrants?
Whatever your entrants already recognise as theirs: an email address, a ticket number, a customer number. Two things are worth keeping in mind. Make sure entrants know their identifier before the drawing takes place, so nobody can suggest identifiers were assigned afterwards. And prefer identifiers that are fixed to a person, such as a customer number, over ones you could reassign, such as a row position in a spreadsheet.
What if I want to test first?
Run a test drawing. It performs the full process and shows you the winners, but nothing is stored: no record, no link, no file. It exists only until you leave the page, so you can try the flow as many times as you like before running the real one.
Public, private and test drawings
What is visible in a public drawing?
Everything about it. Anyone with the link can see the winners table and download the original file the winners were drawn from, which means every entry in that file is publicly readable. Public result pages can also be found by search engines.
So what should I be careful about?
Because a public drawing publishes your whole entry list, choose that option only when your file contains identifiers your entrants would be comfortable seeing published, such as ticket numbers or internal reference numbers. If your list contains email addresses, full names, phone numbers or anything else personal, use a private drawing instead.
What is a private drawing?
A private drawing is protected by a password that you set. The winners table and the source file stay locked until that password is entered, and the page is excluded from search engines. Share the link and the password only with the people who should see the result.
What is a test drawing?
A full drawing that saves nothing at all. Use it to check that your file is read correctly and that the winner count is what you expect.
Records and verification
Can a completed drawing be changed?
No. Once a drawing completes, its record is fixed. The winners, the entry count, the completion time and the file behind it cannot be edited.
Can a drawing be removed?
Not by the account that ran it. Once published, a drawing stays published for its full retention period, so a result cannot be withdrawn after the fact. Removal is limited to site administrators and to the automatic expiry described below.
How long does a record last?
Five years from the moment the drawing completes. After that the record and the uploaded file are deleted permanently and the link stops working. Save anything you need to keep before then.
What is the signed record?
Every completed drawing is published together with a digital signature covering its drawing number, name, completion time, entry and winner counts, a fingerprint of the uploaded file, a fingerprint of the winners list, and the seed source. Anyone can check it on the verification page, which also publishes the public key so the signature can be checked offline with standard tools. A valid signature confirms that a record is authentic, that it has not been altered since it was published, and that the file attached to it is the exact file recorded at the time.