Everything you need to know about using Bracket Seeder for your AoE4 tournaments.
A free tool for AoE4 tournament organizers to generate fair, balanced seeding for tournaments. Unlike full tournament management platforms, we focus on one thing: getting the initial seeding right.
Enter your player list, and we'll automatically look up their ratings from aoe4world.com, apply tournament performance bonuses, and generate balanced brackets or FFA lobbies.
| Feature | Bracket Seeder | Challonge/Start.gg |
|---|---|---|
| AoE4 rating lookup | ✓ Automatic from aoe4world | ✗ Manual entry |
| Pro player boost (ATR) | ✓ Tournament history matters | ✗ |
| FFA lobby balancing | ✓ Snake draft, tiered random | ✗ Limited |
| OBS-ready embeds | ✓ Clean, dark theme | ⚠ Variable |
| Price | Free | Free/Paid tiers |
| Full bracket management | ✗ Seeding only (for now) | ✓ |
Most balanced distribution. Seeds zigzag across lobbies: Lobby A gets seeds 1, 8, 9, 16; Lobby B gets 2, 7, 10, 15; and so on. Ensures each lobby has similar total skill.
Simple sequential spread: Lobby A gets 1, 5, 9, 13; Lobby B gets 2, 6, 10, 14. Less balanced than snake but predictable.
Balance with variety. Players are grouped into skill tiers, then randomly distributed within tiers. Good for recurring tournaments where you want different matchups.
Standard bracket format. Top seeds are placed to meet in later rounds (1 vs 16, 8 vs 9, etc.). One loss and you're out.
Winners and Losers brackets. Lose once and drop to losers bracket. Lose twice and you're eliminated. More forgiving format that rewards consistency.
When the number of players isn't a power of 2 (4, 8, 16, 32...), some players get a bye — they automatically advance to round 2 without playing in round 1.
Higher seeds get byes. For example, with 12 players in a 16-slot bracket, seeds 1-4 receive byes and start in round 2. This rewards top-rated players and ensures they face opponents who've already played a match.
Byes are displayed as "BYE" in the bracket where the missing opponent would be.
Each bracket provides embed URLs optimized for OBS browser sources:
All embeds use a dark theme that looks great on stream.
This tool is in active development. If you have questions, feature requests, or run into issues:
Find @webframp on Discord