Generators
Coin Flip
Flip a fair virtual coin and get heads or tails instantly, with a quick flip animation and a running tally of your results. Perfect for settling a decision or making a fair choice when you don't have a coin handy.
How to flip a coin online
- Click Flip the coin. The circle alternates between Heads and Tails for about 0.8 seconds while the button reads 'Flipping…'.
- Read the result. Heads is shown on an amber coin and Tails on a grey one, and the outcome is announced to screen readers as well.
- Keep flipping. After the first flip a tally of Heads, Tails and Total flips appears beneath the coin and updates each time.
- Click Reset tally to clear the counts and return the coin to its blank question-mark state.
How heads or tails is decided
The flip calls Math.random(), which returns a number from 0 up to but not including 1, and declares Heads when the number is below 0.5 and Tails otherwise. Because the generator produces 2^53 equally spaced values, exactly half fall on each side, so neither face has an edge. The outcome is fixed the moment you click; the ten quick alternations that follow, one every 80 ms, are animation only, and the coin settles on the predetermined result at the end.
Math.random is a pseudo-random generator, seeded by the browser and not derived from the cryptographic Web Crypto source. For deciding who kicks off or which film to watch that is entirely adequate. For a wager with real stakes, where a participant might want to inspect the randomness, a cryptographic source would be the stricter choice.
What a fair tally looks like
A fair coin does not produce an exact 50/50 split; it produces counts that wander around it. The spread of the heads count after n flips has a standard deviation of the square root of n/4, so the proportion tightens as the tally grows while the raw gap between heads and tails tends to widen.
| Flips | Expected heads | Standard deviation | About 95% of tallies fall within |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | 5 | 1.6 | 2 to 8 heads |
| 100 | 50 | 5 | 40 to 60 heads |
| 1,000 | 500 | 15.8 | 469 to 531 heads |
Streaks happen more often than intuition suggests
Over a session of 100 flips there are many starting points, so long runs become routine: a run of at least five identical results appears in about 97% of 100-flip sessions, six or more in about 80%, and seven or more in just over half. Seeing five heads in a row in your tally is therefore no sign that the coin is stuck. Each flip is independent, and after five heads the next flip is still a 50% chance of tails, not an overdue certainty.
| Run of identical results | Chance starting from any given flip |
|---|---|
| 3 in a row | 1 in 8 (12.5%) |
| 5 in a row | 1 in 32 (3.1%) |
| 7 in a row | 1 in 128 (0.8%) |
| 10 in a row | 1 in 1,024 (0.1%) |
Ways people use the coin
- Deciding who goes first in a game, or which team picks side in sport.
- Breaking a two-way tie in a vote or a competition.
- Making a quick decision you have been putting off, then noticing how you feel about the answer.
- Classroom demonstrations of probability: flip 50 times and compare the tally with the table above.
- Best-of-three deciders: note that the winner of three flips is still a 50% proposition, it just takes longer.
Limits of this coin
- One coin at a time; to flip several, click repeatedly and read the tally.
- The tally lives in the page only and is lost on refresh or when you navigate away.
- There is no flip history listing the sequence, only the running totals.
- Clicks during the 0.8-second animation are ignored.
Frequently asked questions
Is the coin flip fair?
Yes. Heads and tails each have a 50% chance on every flip, decided by your browser's random number generator.
Does it keep a tally?
Yes. It counts how many heads and tails you've flipped in the current session. You can reset the tally anytime.
Why use an online coin flip?
It's the quickest way to make a fair 50/50 decision — settling a disagreement, choosing who goes first, or breaking a tie — when you don't have a real coin.
Why did I get heads five times in a row?
Chance. Five identical results in a row has a 1 in 32 probability from any starting flip, and within a session of 100 flips such a run is almost certain to appear somewhere. The coin is not biased.
Does the last result influence the next flip?
No. Every click draws a fresh random number with no memory of earlier flips, so the odds stay at 50% for each face regardless of the tally.
Can I flip two or more coins at once?
Not in one click. Flip twice and read both results; the tally underneath counts every flip so you can keep track of a longer series.
Is the tally kept after I reload the page?
No. The counts are held in memory for the current visit only and reset to zero on reload, the same as pressing Reset tally.
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