Free Bracket Maker

Which tournament format should you use?

Every format trades time for fairness. Here’s how the four compare with 8 teams:

• Single elimination: 7 games over 3 rounds. Lose once and you’re out. It’s the fastest way to a champion, but half the field goes home after one game.
• Double elimination: 14 or 15 games. Nobody is out until their second loss, so every team plays at least twice. It’s the standard for cornhole, pool, darts and softball.
• Round robin: 28 games over 7 rounds. Everyone plays everyone once, and the standings table picks the winner. Best for leagues and small groups.
• Rotating partners: 8 players on 2 courts, 7 rounds. Players get a new partner every round and are ranked on their own results. Built for pickleball, tennis and padel socials.

A simple rule of thumb: one afternoon and lots of teams, use single elimination. People drove an hour to play, use double elimination or pools, so nobody goes home after one game. A whole season ahead, use a round robin.

How many games will your tournament take?

The math is the same for every sport. With n teams, single elimination takes n − 1 games, because every game knocks out exactly one team. Double elimination takes 2n − 2 games, or 2n − 1 if the final has to be replayed. A round robin takes n × (n − 1) ÷ 2 games.

• 4 teams: 3 games single, 6 or 7 double, 6 round robin.
• 6 teams: 5 single, 10 or 11 double, 15 round robin.
• 8 teams: 7 single, 14 or 15 double, 28 round robin.
• 12 teams: 11 single, 22 or 23 double, 66 round robin.
• 16 teams: 15 single, 30 or 31 double, 120 round robin.

To estimate the clock time, count the waves of play rather than the games. A 16-team single-elimination bracket on 4 courts runs in 5 waves (two waves for the 8 first-round games, then one each for the quarterfinals, semifinals and final), so at 30 minutes a game it takes about two and a half hours. Round robins grow fast: past 8 teams, split them into groups.

Seeding and byes, handled

Brackets work in powers of 2: 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128. With any other number, the bracket grows to the next size and the empty slots become byes, free passes into round two. Ten teams make a 16-slot bracket with 6 byes, so only 4 teams play in the first round.

Byes go to the top seeds, in the standard order the pros use: 1 plays 16, 8 plays 9, 4 plays 13, and so on. That keeps the two best teams apart until the final. Your list order is the seeding. You can also shuffle for a random draw, or drag names into place by hand.

Running the event from your phone

• Enter scores as you go. Tap a match, type the score and the winner moves forward. In double elimination, the loser drops into the losers bracket automatically.
• Fix mistakes. Undo the last change, or edit any earlier result. If that changes who plays later, the affected matches are cleared after you confirm.
• Forfeits and no-shows. Mark a forfeit or walkover and the bracket keeps moving.
• Share the link. Players open the view link or scan the QR code and see the bracket, the next matches and the standings. The page refreshes by itself while it’s open, so nobody crowds the scorer’s table.
• Put it on a TV. TV mode shows the bracket full screen in big type and keeps itself up to date.

Until you share, everything stays on your device. The bracket saves in your browser as you go and shows up under “Your brackets” the next time you open the site.

Scoring that matches your sport

Pick a sport and the scoring sets itself: volleyball matches are best of 3 sets to 25, pickleball games go to 11 (win by 2), cornhole games go to 21, soccer standings give 3 points for a win and 1 for a draw, and chess counts a draw as half a point. Every setting can be changed, from the number of sets to the tiebreaker order.

See all of them on the sports and formats page, or start from a page made for your event: cornhole, pool, darts, ping pong, volleyball, softball and bowling.

Print it for the wall

Some events still run off a sheet taped to the wall, and that’s fine. Print gives you a clean landscape page that fits brackets of up to 64 entrants, prints round robin fixtures and standings, and puts a QR code in the corner so anyone can open the current version on their phone. The 8-team and 16-team pages are ready to print in one tap.