Flip a coin online: a fair heads or tails in one tap
Need a quick, fair decision? Flip a coin right here in your browser. A big white coin with a Heads side and a Tails side spins, jumps and lands, just like a real coin toss, except you never have to chase it under the couch. It is free, there is no account and no app to install, and it works on a phone, tablet or computer.
The coin is an original design, not a real currency. One face says Heads, the other says Tails, so nobody can argue about which side is which.
How to use the coin flipper
- Flip it your way. Tap the coin, press the Flip button, or hit the Space bar. The coin spins in 3D, jumps into the air and lands with a sound.
- Flip several coins at once. The sentence “Flip one coin” sets how many coins you toss. Tap the number to switch to 2, 3, 5 or 10 coins, all flipped at once. That is handy for probability games and classroom experiments.
- Keep score. A running count shows how many heads and how many tails you got since you opened the page. The last flips also appear as small chips, so you can see the recent sequence at a glance. Press Reset to clear them.
- Use your voice. Tap the microphone in the header and say “flip a coin” or “flip three coins”.
The Sound button in the bottom bar turns the landing sound on or off. The full screen button in the header makes the coin bigger, which works well on a classroom board, a stream or a TV at a party. To change the page color, use the round button at the bottom right.
Ways to use heads or tails
- Settle a choice. Two restaurants, two movies, two ways to spend Saturday. Give one to heads and one to tails, then flip. If you feel a little let down by the result, that tells you something too.
- Kickoff and sides. Pickup games, school matches and backyard tournaments often start with a coin toss to decide who kicks off or which end each team defends.
- Who goes first. Board games, card games, chess with a friend, the first turn on a video game. One flip and it is decided.
- Teaching probability. Flip 10 coins at once, count the heads, and repeat. Students quickly see that 5 heads is the most common result, but far from guaranteed.
Need more than two options? The dice roller goes up to 100 sides, the random number generator picks from any range, and the wheel of names handles a whole list. For a plain answer to a question, try the yes or no generator.
Is this coin toss really 50/50?
Yes. Each flip is decided by your browser's cryptographic random generator, the same kind of source used for security. Heads and tails each have exactly a 1 in 2 chance, every time. The animation only shows the result, so how you tap does not change it. Each flip is independent: the coin has no memory of what came before.
Real coins are very close to fair, but not perfect. Researchers who have studied physical coin tosses have reported a slight tendency for a coin to land on the same side it started on. A digital coin has no starting side, no weight and no thumb, so it stays exactly even.
Chance of all heads
When you flip several coins, the chance that they all land on heads is cut in half with each extra coin.
| Coins flipped | Chance of all heads |
|---|---|
| 1 | 1 in 2 (50%) |
| 2 | 1 in 4 (25%) |
| 3 | 1 in 8 (12.5%) |
| 5 | 1 in 32 (about 3.1%) |
| 10 | 1 in 1,024 (about 0.1%) |
The same numbers apply to all tails. With 10 coins, the most likely result is exactly 5 heads, yet that only happens about 24.6% of the time. Getting 4, 5 or 6 heads covers about 66% of tosses.
Streaks are normal
Three heads in a row can feel suspicious, but it is exactly what randomness looks like. In a series of 10 flips, there is about an 83% chance of seeing the same side at least three times in a row somewhere, and about a 46% chance of a run of four. After a streak, the next flip is still 50/50. The feeling that tails is “due” after a run of heads is known as the gambler's fallacy.
A short history of the coin toss
People have tossed coins to decide things for a very long time. A commonly cited tradition says that children in ancient Rome played a game called “navia aut caput”, ship or head, because some Roman coins showed a ship on one side and a head on the other. Whatever its exact origin, the habit stuck. Many sports still begin with a coin toss, and in American football the toss before the game gives the winning team the first choice, such as kicking off or receiving.