YouTube Random
Comment Picker
Pick a giveaway winner from your comments. Paste a video link, draw, and publish the seed with the name. Duplicates are dropped by default and every draw can be re-run by anyone who doubts it.
Four steps, and none of them are hidden
Most pickers show a spinning wheel and a name. That asks your viewers to trust the animation. This one publishes the number the shuffle started from, so the draw can be repeated by anyone.
The tool pulls up to the 1,000 most recent top-level comments. Replies are ignored, because a single argument in one thread can otherwise add forty entries from four people.
Duplicates, your own comments, blocked accounts and anything missing the entry keyword drop out. Every removal is listed in the ledger with its reason.
Sixteen hex characters from your browser decide the order. The result exists the moment the seed does — the reveal animation is only playback.
Publish the seed, the entry count and the rules. Anyone can paste them back in and land on the same name, which is the part a spinning wheel can never offer.
Change one entry, one filter or one character of the seed and the result changes with it. Leave all three alone and it cannot.
Picking an index repeatedly has to handle drawing the same name twice, and the usual fixes bend the odds. Shuffling once and reading from the top means nobody appears twice.
What counts as an entry, and what does not
A comment section is not an entry list until something removes the noise. These are the default exclusions, and the reasoning behind each one.
A thread's replies are noise. YouTube counts every reply as a comment, so one argument about shipping can add forty entries from four people.
Matched on the commenter's channel ID rather than their display name, so a rename or a duplicated handle does not slip through as two entries.
Comments are read in order up to the 1,000 most recent. On a huge thread that is a sample, not a census — say so in the announcement.
The commonest source of unfairness. Three comments from one account is three times the odds unless something removes them.
Matched on the channel owner ID rather than the display name, so a pinned reply cannot end up holding the prize.
Anything currently invisible on the video is invisible to the draw. If a comment reappears later, load the entries again and it joins the pool.
Only when you have set one. An entry hashtag is the cheapest way to separate people who meant to enter from people who were passing.
Decide these before entries open
You are the promoter, not the tool. Four calls to make first, then the obligations that come with being the promoter — what YouTube's contest policies ask of you, and what your own viewers will ask afterwards.
Comments keep arriving. Draw on a stated time and note it in the announcement, so anyone comparing your result against the live comment count understands why the numbers differ.
A required entry word is the one thing you can retrofit nothing about. Choosing one after entries open means narrowing the field on a pretext, and it looks like one.
Most winners answer within a day or two, some never do. Ordered runners-up from the same shuffle mean you have decided who is next before you need to know.
You are messaging a username, not a person. Pin a comment, announce the name on the channel, and give a deadline to claim before it moves on.
Prize, closing time, eligible countries, how the winner is contacted. A link in the description is enough, and it settles most disputes.
Their contest policies ask for an acknowledgement that YouTube neither sponsors nor endorses your giveaway, plus a release from liability.
A contest an entrant has to pay into is a different legal animal in most places, and a breach of a fair few local rules.
Trading a prize for likes or subscriptions is not allowed. A comment is the mechanic that stays inside the guidelines.
You cannot quietly consent to hand over somebody else's footage or likeness. If you want to feature an entry, ask.
Prize promotions are policed by local law, not platform policy. Age limits, registration thresholds and tax questions vary.
Re-running until you like the name is the only thing that makes a picker unfair. Publish the seed with the result.
The seed, the entry count and the rules, exactly as run. One paragraph under the announcement ends the argument.
Getting the prize to the winner
A name is not a delivery. Most disputes happen in the days after the draw, when a winner goes quiet or a second account claims to be the same person. Decide the timeline before you announce.
Display names can be copied in seconds, and impersonators reply to giveaway announcements for a living. Resolve the handle to a channel ID with the Channel ID Finder and check it against the comment before you send anything.
Reply to the winning comment so the whole thread sees the same thing you do, then take the address or the account details somewhere private. Never ask for payment details, and never ask anyone to pay shipping.
When the window closes without a reply, post that it closed and that runner-up one now holds the prize. The order came out of the same shuffle, so the second name needs no second draw and no new seed.
Frequently asked
Is the draw actually random?+
The seed comes from your browser's cryptographic random number generator, and the shuffle is a single Fisher–Yates pass over the eligible pool. Given the same pool and the same seed the result is identical everywhere, which is what makes it checkable rather than merely random.
How can my viewers check I did not rig it?+
Publish the seed with the result, along with the entry count and the rules you used. Anyone can paste that seed into this page with the same video and the same rules, press Re-run, and land on the same name.
Does it read every comment?+
It reads up to the 1,000 most recent top-level comments — a limit we set to keep the tool free within YouTube's daily API quota. On a very large thread the draw runs on a recent sample, and the page says so.
Why are duplicates removed by default?+
Because otherwise the most persistent commenter wins. One entry per channel is the assumption almost every published set of giveaway rules makes, so it is the default here.
Can I require a keyword or a tagged friend?+
Yes, both, under Set up the draw. The keyword is matched as a whole word or hashtag, in any case, anywhere in the comment — so "win" does not match "twin". Requiring an @ mention filters far harder than most creators expect.
What if the winner never claims the prize?+
That is what the runners-up are for. They come from the same shuffle in order, so moving to the next name needs no second draw and no new seed.
Do you keep the comments or the result?+
The comments are cached on our side for a few hours so a re-draw does not query YouTube again — the page shows when they were read, and Refresh reads them again. The draw itself runs in your browser and nothing about it is stored, so copy the seed before you close the tab.
Can I use it for a channel I do not own?+
You can draw from any public video, but running the giveaway makes you the promoter. Do not draw on someone else's contest and announce it as a result.
Related tools
Comments Viewer
Read a whole comment section on one searchable page before you draw.
Open →Channel ID Finder
Resolve a winner's handle to a stable channel ID before you pay out.
Open →Description Viewer
Check that your official rules are still linked where you said they would be.
Open →Hashtag Generator
Pick an entry hashtag that is specific enough to filter on cleanly.
Open →
Free, no account, and nothing about the draw is stored on our side.