Random Letter Generator

How do I get random letters?

1. Pick all 26 letters, only vowels or only consonants, and type any letters to leave out, such as Q and Z for a word game.
2. Say how many letters you want and whether one may come up twice.
3. Press Generate letters; switch the case to lower or mixed if the letters go on cards.

The sample above is 5 letters with seed K3TR-8KQ2-WZ5N: W, F, E, C, D (Whiskey, Foxtrot, Echo, Charlie, Delta). The same seed with the same settings brings back those letters in that order, so a teacher can prepare a spelling round at home and replay it in class. If the letters you need are not A to Z, for example Scrabble tiles or the letters of a name, paste your own list into the list randomizer instead.

Random alphabet generator: all 26 letters in a new order

Set How many to 26 and leave Allow repeats off: each letter then appears exactly once, and the result is the alphabet shuffled. With the sample seed it comes out as W F E C D N X T I O V A M P S H Z L U K J B Y Q R G. The alphabet can be arranged in 26 × 25 × … × 1 = 26! different ways, which is 4.03 × 10²⁶ orders, or exactly 403,291,461,126,605,635,584,000,000. Each of them is equally likely, because the letters are put in order with the same Fisher–Yates shuffle the rest of the site uses.

The 26 letters and how they are grouped

The generator works from the 26 letters of the basic Latin alphabet used for English: 5 vowels (A, E, I, O, U), 20 consonants and Y, which sits in a group of its own because it can be either. Tick Count Y as a vowel and Y joins the vowels; leave it unticked and Y is drawn with the consonants. Letters typed into Leave out are removed before the draw, whatever group they belong to.

How likely is at least one vowel?

Word games often need a vowel in the hand. The chance of getting at least one among k random letters depends on whether letters may repeat and on where Y goes. With repeats every pick is a fresh 5-in-26 chance (6 in 26 with Y as a vowel), so the chance of no vowel at all is (21/26)^k. Without repeats each consonant drawn makes a vowel a little more likely next time, which is why that column grows slightly faster.

Reading letters out: the NATO code words

Over a phone line B and D, or M and N, are easy to confuse, so each letter can be shown with its code word from the NATO phonetic alphabet: Alfa for A, Bravo for B, through to Zulu. The spellings follow NATO’s own page on the alphabet, which writes Alfa and Juliett rather than Alpha and Juliet. The same page records that NATO first planned the alphabet for 1 January 1956 and that the Allies were told on 21 February 1956 it would be made effective in NATO on 1 March 1956. The code words are display only: turning them on or off never changes which letters are drawn.

Up to 1,000 letters fit in one draw when repeats are allowed, enough for a page of random letters to practice handwriting or typing; without repeats the limit is the number of letters left after the filters.

A random letter in Excel or Google Sheets

In a spreadsheet one random capital letter is a single formula, =CHAR(RANDBETWEEN(65,90)): RANDBETWEEN draws a whole number from 65 to 90, and CHAR turns it into the character with that code, A for 65 through Z for 90 (CHAR in Excel, CHAR in Google Sheets). Use 97 to 122 for lower case. The formula draws again every time the sheet recalculates and has no seed, so a result cannot be replayed; the guide to randomizing a list in Excel shows how to freeze it with Paste Values.

List checked against NATO on October 13, 2026.