Flip 5 Coins at Once
Press once and this page flips 5 coins together. There is no tie with 5 flips, and half of all 5-flip runs contain a streak of at least 3 identical results.
Flip it
Each flip is an independent 50/50 draw from your browser's random number generator. A run of five or six the same way is normal in 100 flips — that is what surprises people most.
What 5 flips produce
There are 32 sequences and each is equally likely. Grouped by how many heads land:
| Heads | Ways | Chance |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | 1 | 3.125% |
| 4 | 5 | 15.625% |
| 3 | 10 | 31.25% |
| 2 | 10 | 31.25% |
| 1 | 5 | 15.625% |
| 0 | 1 | 3.125% |
A near-even 3-2 split, one way or the other, accounts for 62.5% of runs. All five landing the same is 6.25%, about one run in 16.
A streak of three is a coin flip
Exactly half of all 5-flip runs contain three or more identical results in a row, and 18.75% contain four or more. So if you flip 5 and get HHHTT, nothing has gone wrong. Streaks are what randomness looks like over a short run, and the shorter the run the more of it a single streak takes up.
Best of five
An odd count cannot tie, so 5 flips always deliver a majority, and that majority is a straight 50/50 between heads and tails. There is no advantage to flipping first.
Fewer flips: 3 at a time. More: 10 at a time, where the even split becomes the number worth looking at. Any other count is on the coin flip page.