Bracket maker
A free single-elimination bracket maker
The short version: Paste a list of names and get a seeded single-elimination bracket for anywhere from 2 to 512 entrants, with byes placed on the top seeds automatically. Record results as matches finish and the winners move up the tree. Restyle it to match your event, then share it by link, embed it on a page or stream, or download it as SVG, PNG, JSON or CSV.
Who this is for: Anyone running a knockout event — a club night, a Night Arena cup, a classroom tournament — who wants a clean bracket to share without setting up a server.
Why it exists
Two names, a line, and somebody goes through.
A bracket is very old technology: two names, a line between them, and somebody goes through. It is still the clearest way to show a knockout event, and still a chore to draw by hand. The moment a field is not a power of two somebody has to work out where the byes go, every corrected score means redrawing the rounds above it, and the finished picture has to be exported, resized and posted again every time it changes. The Clutchat bracket maker does that arithmetic for you and keeps one live copy of the bracket that everyone can open.
It is built for anyone running a knockout: a community night, a club ladder, a school or office competition, a charity match, a weekly cup in a Discord server, or a results graphic for a stream. You need a Clutchat account to build and edit brackets — sign in with Discord, Google or an emailed code — but nobody needs an account to view one you have shared.
Four steps
How it works
- Seed the field. Type or paste the entrants, one per line, or import a CSV or TSV from a spreadsheet. Choose how they are placed: standard seeding from the order of the list, a random draw, or exactly the pairings you typed.
- Generate the tree. The bracket is sized to the next power of two, the spare slots become byes for the top seeds, and every round is labelled — Round 1 through to the Final, or names of your own.
- Record results. Click a match on the bracket or use the Results panel. Winners advance on their own, and a whole round can be entered and saved together. Correct a score later and everything that depended on it is recalculated rather than left behind.
- Publish it. Every bracket has a six-character share code and a link anyone can open. Only you can change it; everyone else gets a read-only view they can zoom and export.
The arithmetic
What happens to thirteen names
Thirteen is the awkward case — not a power of two, so some entrants have to sit out the first round. This is the whole calculation the bracket maker does for you:
- 16 slots
- The next power of two. A single-elimination tree has no other shape, so this is not a setting.
- 3 byes
- Sixteen slots less thirteen names. With standard seeding they land on seeds 1, 2 and 3, so the first round has five matches rather than eight.
- 4 rounds
- Round 1, quarterfinal, semifinal and final. Any of them can be renamed.
- 12 matches to play
- Fifteen boxes in the tree, three of them byes that are already decided — so twelve matches ever take a score.
Seeding
Three ways to seed
- Standard
- The list is the seeding, and the tree is folded 1 v 16, 8 v 9, 5 v 12 and so on, so the strongest entrants meet as late as possible.
- Random
- The field is shuffled and then folded the same way. The draw is stored with the bracket, so it does not change every time someone opens the page; redraw it when you want a new one.
- As entered
- No folding: the first name plays the second, the third plays the fourth. For a draw that was already made somewhere else.
Customise
Make it look like your event
Pick one of four palettes or set every colour yourself, run the tree left to right, right to left or top to bottom, choose compact, standard or roomy spacing, and switch between elbow, straight and curved connectors. Add a wordmark, a logo and a backdrop — a flat colour, a gradient or an image. Save a brand profile once and apply it to any bracket in one click. A third-place playoff for the two losing semifinalists is one switch away.
Publish
Share, embed and export
Share link. A short code on a real address, drawn from an alphabet with no easily confused characters, because these codes get read aloud and retyped.
Embed. An
<iframe>snippet that shows only the bracket, sized to its shape. Turn on the transparent background and it sits straight over a stream layout or a coloured page.SVG and PNG. The SVG is drawn by the same renderer as the screen, so the file is exactly what you see; the PNG is rendered at twice the size for sharp posts.
JSON and CSV. The full bracket with every match, and a standings table with each entrant’s placement, wins, losses and the round they went out in.
Which tool
Bracket maker or Clutchat tournaments?
The bracket maker draws and tracks a bracket; it does not run the event around it. There is no sign-up form, no check-in and no player reporting — you enter the field and the results yourself, and it supports single elimination only. That makes it the quickest option when you already know who is playing, or when the event runs somewhere else and you just need the picture.
If you want players to register, check in and report their own scores in your Discord server, with double elimination, round robin or Swiss as well, use Clutchat tournaments instead. The sixteen-team bracket guide walks through running one from start to finish, and seeding a bracket by rating applies to both tools.
Help
Common questions
How big can a bracket be?
From 2 to 512 entrants. A 512-entrant bracket has 1,023 boxes, and past that a picture of the whole tree stops being readable.
Can the people I send it to change the results?
No. Anyone with the link can view and export the bracket; only the account that built it can edit it.
What if I record a result wrongly?
Clear it or change it. Every result above it that depended on the old winner is cleared too, so the bracket never shows somebody in a round they did not reach.
I used the bracket maker at its old address. Where are my brackets?
Here. Sign in with the same account and they are under Your brackets, and old share links forward to the new address on their own. If you used to sign in with a password, use the emailed code with the same address.
Paste the names. Get the bracket.
The full guide covers seeding, byes, standings, customisation and exports in detail.