Guest list builder
Build the guest list for a birthday, shower, wedding or dinner in your browser, and see how many people those names really add up to. Free, no account, and nothing you type leaves this device.
Paste several at once: one per line, or separated by commas.
The list is saved in this browser on this device and is never sent anywhere. Clearing your browser data clears it, and it will not appear on your phone.
A list cannot ask anyone anything
Every number on the list above is your guess about someone else. The moment you share a file, it starts going stale, because the people whose answers you need cannot edit it. A party on MakeTheRSVP turns the same list into one link: your guests answer for themselves in a tap with no account, they say how many they are bringing, and the total updates as they reply. Free for up to 25 guests, with no card.
Building a list that survives contact with real people
The four things that decide whether a guest list is still true on the day.
How to use the guest list builder
- Type a name and press Enter. Paste a whole list if you already have one somewhere - one name per line, or comma separated.
- Set the number beside each name to how many people arrive under it. One for a single guest, two for a couple, four for a family.
- Watch the total. It counts people, not names, which is the number your caterer, your venue and your seating plan all care about.
- Download the CSV when you want it in a spreadsheet.
Names are not people
This is the single most common way a guest list goes wrong. Thirty names on a page feels like thirty chairs, but a list of thirty households at a wedding is closer to fifty people, and a list of twenty children at a birthday is twenty children plus however many parents decide to stay. The gap is never small and it is never in your favour.
The column beside each name in this tool exists for exactly that reason. It is still a guess, though - it is your guess about somebody else's plans.
Where a browser list stops being enough
A private list is the right tool while you are still deciding who to invite. It stops being the right tool the moment the list needs to be true, because keeping it true means collecting answers: texts, replies to an email, a message on the school gate, someone asking whether they can bring their sister. All of that arrives in different places and gets retyped by hand, and the version in your head drifts from the version in the file.
The fix is not a better spreadsheet. It is letting each person answer for themselves, in the one place you are already looking.
Taking the list somewhere else
The CSV button gives you two columns: the name exactly as you typed it and the number of people arriving under it. That opens in Excel, Numbers, Google Sheets and every seating-plan tool that accepts an import, and it is the same shape a caterer will ask you for.
Nothing you type here is sent anywhere. The list lives in this browser tab, which is also why clearing your site data clears it - export before you close down for the night if the list matters.
Related free tools
Not sure how many of them will turn up? You can estimate it from the number you invited. Once you would rather have real answers than an estimate, there is more on chasing the people who go quiet, and if the occasion is a shower, the questions worth asking are different.
Questions about building a guest list
Start with names rather than numbers, because the names are the part you will forget. Write down every household or invitation first, then go back and put a number against each one for how many people it actually covers. Doing it in that order is what stops you from inviting forty people and catering for twenty-five.
Yes. It is stored in this browser on this device, so it survives a refresh or a closed tab. It is not synced anywhere, which means clearing your browser data clears it and it will not appear on your phone or on anyone else's screen.
Yes. Download CSV gives you a two-column file, Name and People, that opens directly in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets. Names containing commas are quoted correctly, so a list of households does not break into the wrong columns.
No, and that is the honest limitation of any browser tool. The list never leaves this device, so nobody else can open it, add themselves to it, or correct their own row. If you need the people on the list to answer for themselves, you need a shared page rather than a private file.
Work backwards from the constraint that actually binds. If it is space, count seats or floor area. If it is money, divide the budget by the per-head cost. If it is neither, the practical ceiling for a party where the host wants to talk to everybody is usually around thirty. Then remember that a name is not a person: partners, children and siblings all arrive under one name.