You've run your giveaway and the comments are rolling in. Now you have to choose a winner — and how you do it matters more than people think. The slowest and least reliable option is also the most common: picking by hand. Here's why to skip that, and how a comment picker does the job better.
Why you shouldn't pick a winner by hand
Scrolling your comments and "choosing one" runs into a few problems:
- People trust giveaway apps. Participants have come to see a comment-picker app as the fair way to draw a winner. Pick by hand and many of them simply won't believe it was random — and that doubt is the fastest way to lose trust in your next giveaway.
- It doesn't scale. Once you have more than 100 comments, scrolling to a "random" one is slow — and you won't really be random about it.
- It's hard to stay fair. Picking by hand, you naturally drift toward names you recognise.
- Shortcuts can be gamed. "The 100th comment wins" sounds fair, but anyone watching the count can time their entry.
What a comment picker does for you
A comment picker reads the comments on your post and selects a winner at random, so the choice is out of your hands. The good ones do more than spin a wheel — they apply your giveaway rules for you:
- Picks at random. The winner is drawn randomly from the entries, not chosen by you.
- Filters by tags. If your rule was "tag a friend," you can keep only the comments that actually tagged someone.
- Filters by keyword. If you asked people to comment a specific word or answer a question, you can narrow entries to the comments that include it.
- Spam protection. Obvious bot and spam comments are screened out, so a cheater is less likely to win your prize.
- No login, no scrolling. You paste your public post link — no Instagram password, and no copy-pasting comments by hand.
Our pick: Easy Giveaway
Easy Giveaway is built for exactly this. You paste your Instagram post link, set your rules — filter by tags, filter by a keyword, or just draw from the comments — and it picks a random winner in seconds. There's no login and no account, it uses spam protection so bot entries are less likely to win, and your first giveaway is free.
Pick a winner in seconds
Paste your post link and Easy Giveaway draws a random winner from your comments, with tag and keyword filters — no login, no account, and your first giveaway is free.
You've picked your winner. Now the most valuable step of all: keeping the followers the giveaway brought you.