About the Bingo Card Generator
This bingo card generator makes as many unique cards as you need, in two styles. Number mode builds classic American 75-ball cards: five columns headed B-I-N-G-O, with B drawn from 1–15, I from 16–30, N from 31–45, G from 46–60 and O from 61–75, and an optional FREE space in the centre. Custom mode turns your own list of words, phrases or names into 3×3, 4×4 or 5×5 cards — perfect for baby showers, classroom vocabulary, meeting bingo, road trips and holiday parties.
Every card is shuffled independently, so no two players should get the same layout. The tool also tells you how many different cards are possible, which shows why duplicates are practically impossible with a long enough word list, and warns you when your list is too short to fill a card.
Add a seed if you want to reproduce exactly the same set of cards later (for example to print a replacement), or leave it blank for a fresh random set every time. Copy the grids into a document or print the page directly.
How to use the bingo card generator
- 1Choose 75-ball numbers or custom words.
- 2Enter how many cards you need — one per player.
- 3For word bingo, pick a grid size and paste one word or phrase per line.
- 4Keep or remove the free centre space.
- 5Generate, then copy or print the cards; add a seed to recreate the same set later.
Formula and method
A 75-ball card is built column by column: five distinct numbers are drawn at random from that column's range of 15 (B 1–15, I 16–30, N 31–45, G 46–60, O 61–75), and the N column gets only four when the centre is a free space. Because position within the column matters, each column has P(15,5) = 360,360 arrangements and the N column P(15,4) = 32,760, giving about 5.52 × 10^26 distinct cards.
Word cards shuffle your de-duplicated list with a Fisher–Yates shuffle and take the first S entries, where S is the number of squares (grid size squared, minus one for a free centre). The number of distinct layouts is the number of ordered selections of S items from W entries, P(W, S). Each entry lands on a given card with probability S ÷ W.
- W
- Number of unique words or phrases in your list
- S
- Squares to fill on one card
- P(n,k)
- Ordered selections of k items from n
Worked examples
Four classic 75-ball cards
With a free centre, each card has 24 numbers. The B, I, G and O columns each have 15 × 14 × 13 × 12 × 11 = 360,360 orderings and the N column 15 × 14 × 13 × 12 = 32,760, so 360,360⁴ × 32,760 ≈ 5.52 × 10^26 cards are possible.
Video-meeting word bingo, 4×4
A 4×4 card has no centre square, so all 16 squares need an entry. From the 28 default phrases there are 28!/12! ≈ 6.37 × 10^20 ordered layouts, and each phrase appears on 16/28 ≈ 57% of cards.
Too few words for a 5×5 card
A 5×5 card with a free space needs 24 different entries. Only 10 fruits were supplied, so the tool asks for 14 more instead of producing cards with repeated squares.
Frequently asked questions
What numbers go in each column of a bingo card?+
On a standard American 75-ball card, B uses 1–15, I uses 16–30, N uses 31–45, G uses 46–60 and O uses 61–75. Each column has five numbers except N, which has four plus the free space.
How many different 75-ball bingo cards are there?+
With the free centre, there are 360,360⁴ × 32,760 ≈ 5.52 × 10^26 possible cards when the order of numbers within a column counts. Even if order is ignored there are still about 1.11 × 10^17 distinct sets of numbers.
How many words do I need for custom bingo?+
At least 24 for a 5×5 card with a free space, 25 without, 16 for 4×4 and 8 for 3×3 with a free space. Use 1.5–2 times that many so cards differ noticeably from one another.
Can two players get the same card?+
With 75-ball numbers or a long word list the chance is negligible. If your word list is exactly the size of the card, every card contains the same words in a different order, so several players could fill their cards on the same call.
What is the difference between 75-ball and 90-ball bingo?+
75-ball bingo, common in the US and Canada, uses a 5×5 card. 90-ball bingo, common in the UK and Australia, uses tickets of 3 rows by 9 columns with 15 numbers each. This generator makes 75-ball and custom word cards.