Random PIN Generator
A PIN nobody can guess from your birthday, drawn digit by digit from your browser's cryptographic random source.
Words are drawn from the 7,776-word EFF list, so each one adds 12.9 bits. Easier to type and remember than a random string of the same strength.
A PIN is only as safe as the device that rate-limits it. Do not reuse it as a password.
Generate a Random PIN
Most PINs are not chosen, they are remembered from somewhere else: a year of birth, a house number, a date that means something. That makes them guessable by anyone who knows a little about you, and predictable even to someone who does not, because we all reach for the same handful of patterns. This page opens the generator in PIN mode, where each digit is drawn independently from 0 to 9 with the browser's cryptographic random source, so no habit of yours gets into the result.
It is worth being clear about what that does and does not buy you, because a PIN is the weakest thing this tool makes.
A PIN is weak on its own
| Digits | Possible codes | Entropy |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | 1,000 | about 10 bits |
| 4 | 10,000 | about 13 bits |
| 6 | 1 million | about 20 bits |
| 8 | 100 million | about 27 bits |
| 12 | 1 trillion | about 40 bits |
Put those figures next to a password and the gap is obvious: sixteen random letters and digits is about 95 bits, and every bit doubles the work. A machine that tries a billion codes a second exhausts every possible 12-digit PIN in under twenty minutes, and a 4-digit one faster than you can read this sentence. The randomness on this page removes the easy guesses; it cannot change the size of the space being searched.
What makes a PIN usable anyway is that a well-designed system never lets anyone guess freely. The card is swallowed after three attempts, the phone adds a delay and then wipes itself, the door keypad locks for a minute. The PIN supplies a few bits; the device supplies the rest of the security.
Where a PIN is fine, and where it is not
- Fine: a phone or tablet lock screen with a lockout after repeated failures, a bank card, a SIM card, an alarm or door keypad, a voicemail box, a safe with a delay between attempts.
- Not fine: anything an attacker can copy and attack at their own pace — an encrypted archive or disk, a website login, a router admin page, a Wi-Fi network, a password manager.
- Never: as the password for an online account, or as the same code on your phone, your card and your front door at once. One shoulder-surf in a shop should not open everything you own.
Randomness includes results that look wrong
Because every digit is independent, a genuinely random draw sometimes produces 1234, 0000 or a run of the same digit. That happens about once in ten thousand four-digit draws, and filtering it out would make the remaining PINs slightly more predictable rather than less. The generator therefore leaves the output alone. Use Generate 10, read down the list and take one that neither looks like a pattern nor matches a date in your life.
Write it down somewhere sensible while it is new. A PIN you cannot recall is usually replaced within a week by the year you were born, which undoes the whole exercise.
What to use instead, and when
For an account, generate a long random string with the strong password generator and let a password manager remember it. For the secret that unlocks the manager itself, a passphrase of five or six random words is memorable and carries about twice the bits of a twelve-digit PIN, which squares the work an attacker faces. For a home network, the Wi-Fi password generator produces something long but still typable on a TV remote. The guide to strong passwords sets out how the pieces fit together, including why two-factor authentication matters more than any code you can keep in your head.