Random Letter Generator

How to pick a random letter

1. Leave How many at 1 for a single big letter, or enter up to 1,000.
2. Choose the letters to draw from: A-Z, vowels only (A, E, I, O, U), consonants only, or a custom set you type yourself.
3. Pick a case: UPPER, lower or MiXeD, where each letter is randomly upper or lower case.
4. Tick No repeats if each letter may appear only once, and choose a separator for lists.
5. Press Generate, or hit Space or Enter anywhere on the page. Copy the result or download it as a text file.

Single letters are added to the Last 10 row under the tool, newest first, so you can see what has already come up in a game. Use Clear to start a new round.

What the options do

• A-Z draws from all 26 letters of the English alphabet, each with a 1 in 26 (about 3.85%) chance.
• Vowels uses A, E, I, O and U. Y is left out because it only sometimes acts as a vowel; add it in a custom set if your game counts it.
• Consonants uses the other 21 letters, including Y.
• Custom set draws only from the letters you type. Spaces, commas and digits are ignored and duplicates count once, so a, b, c, a becomes A, B, C. Accented letters such as Ñ or É work too.
• No repeats draws without replacement, like pulling tiles from a bag. You cannot ask for more letters than the set holds: 6 vowels without repeats is impossible, and the tool says so.

Uses for random letters

• Scattergories and category games: pick a letter, then everyone names a fruit, a city and an animal starting with it. Exclude hard letters like Q, X and Z with a custom set.
• Alphabet and phonics practice: show one big letter and ask children to say its sound or a word that starts with it. Lowercase mode helps with letter recognition.
• Word games: draw seven letters without repeats for a homemade Scrabble rack, or a vowel and two consonants for a quick three-letter word challenge.
• Random picks: choose a student by initial, a section of a list, a row in a seating plan or a group letter.
• Codes and test data: random letter strings for placeholder IDs, sample inputs and spreadsheet exercises. For real security codes, use the Password Generator instead.
• Creative prompts: draw two letters and write a story whose title uses those initials, or name a character with them.

Running a letter game

Put the page on a laptop or a projector and leave How many at 1. The letter fills the result box, so the whole room can read it. Press Space to reveal the next letter without touching the mouse, and glance at the Last 10 row to check that a letter has not come up already. If repeats would spoil the round, generate all 26 letters at once with No repeats on, download the list, and work through it in order: you get a shuffled alphabet with every letter exactly once.

For a quick classroom warm-up, switch to lowercase and vowels only, then ask pupils for a word that contains the vowel shown. For older groups, draw three consonants and challenge everyone to find the longest word that uses all of them.

Is every letter equally likely?

Yes. Each letter in the chosen set has exactly the same chance, using your browser's cryptographically secure random source and rejection sampling to avoid the small bias of simple modulo tricks. That is different from real English text, where E is about 170 times more common than Z. The table compares the two and shows how many words in our Random Word Generator list start with each letter, which is useful when a game needs a letter that is easy to play.

English text shares are approximate and vary by source. If you want to avoid letters that start very few words, a custom set such as ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPRSTW keeps the most playable 20.