How it works : Worksheets
A PDF, not a page to print: what comes out of a browser's print dialogue depends on its settings, its margins and its mood, whereas a PDF gives the same sheet on every printer.
An arithmetic sheet takes ten seconds to build and can be rebuilt endlessly: exactly the kind of job a program does better than a person. The trouble is that the sites which build them want an account, stamp a watermark across the page, or hand you back a file made on their server. Here the sheet is written inside your browser, and it drops straight into your downloads.
The tool produces a PDF rather than a page to print, and that is not a technical footnote. A page printed from a browser depends on its default margins, on the “print backgrounds” box and on the paper size it guessed: two teachers get two different sheets. A PDF carries its dimensions and its positions inside the file, so it comes out the same everywhere, including on the photocopier in the staff room.
The numbers are drawn with the system's random generator, never with the browser's ordinary one. On an arithmetic sheet the consequence is modest; but two sheets built one after the other will not look alike, and that is precisely what an exercise generator is for.
How it works
- Choose the operation, how many exercises and how big the numbers go. The written preview tells you what the sheet will hold, before it is built.
- Click the button: the PDF drops into your downloads, with its answer key on a second page if you asked for one.
- Build it again as often as you like: every sheet is drawn afresh. None is kept, neither by us nor on your device.
Formats accepted
This tool takes neither a file nor a text: it writes a PDF from your settings. The title you type is checked character by character before being written, because a PDF with no embedded font can only write a limited character set.
No input
The tool starts from your settings and your system's random generator. The library that writes the PDF is served from this site, never from an outside service, and the tool works with the connection cut.
Its limits
Arithmetic written in a line, and nothing else
Sums, differences, products, quotients, times tables: operations written in a line with room for the answer. No word problems, no geometry, no language exercises. A word problem needs text written by a human being, in a given language and for a given level: that would be editorial work, not a generator, and nobody wants mass-produced problem statements.
The title can only use the Windows-1252 character set
A PDF has only fourteen guaranteed fonts, and they know only that character set. Embedding a full font would add hundreds of kilobytes to every sheet. The library, for its part, replaces an unknown character with a question mark AND SAYS NOTHING: we refuse that silence, so the tool names every rejected character with its code point before writing anything at all. Accented Latin letters all pass; Greek, Cyrillic and emoji do not.
120 exercises per sheet at most
Past that, the cells get too tight for a child to write in, and the sheet stops being usable long before the tool stops working. The limit sits where the sheet turns bad, not where the program breaks.
The same settings never give the same sheet twice
That is deliberate: an exercise generator handing back the same list every time would be useless. The consequence is that you cannot rebuild a sheet you handed out last week. Keep the PDF, it is yours: it is the only copy in existence.
The PDF carries no date and no name
No creation date, no producing software, no author. Those would be the only pieces of information about you that the file would carry, and an arithmetic sheet has no reason to say when and with what it was made. It is the same decision as for the icon archive in the image corner.
Questions about this tool
Is the PDF built on a server?
No, and you can check it in ten seconds. Open the inspector with the F12 key, go to the “Network” tab, clear the list, then build as many sheets as you like: nothing leaves. Cut your connection and do it again: the tool still writes, because the library that composes the PDF is served from this site and kept by the browser for offline use.
Why not simply print the page?
Because the result would not be reproducible, and all three reasons can be checked in the reference texts. First, the web standard governing colour in print sets “economy” as its default value, which explicitly allows a browser to ignore backgrounds to save ink: the frames and fills of a sheet therefore vanish without warning, and the property that lets a page ask otherwise only landed in the most widely used browser in 2025. Second, the paper size declared in CSS has only been honoured by Apple's browser since late 2024. Third, print margins are set by the browser's own dialogue rather than by the page, and two browsers do not treat a margin asked to be zero the same way. A PDF carries its dimensions and the exact position of every character: that is what makes it safe to say the sheet will come out the same for you and on the school photocopier.
How are the divisions built?
Backwards, starting from the result. A quotient and a divisor are drawn, multiplied together, and the product becomes the dividend: the division therefore comes out whole by construction. Drawing a dividend and a divisor at random and hoping for a round answer would mean redrawing until it worked, which distorts the distribution of the numbers you end up with. If you untick “only divisions that come out whole”, the tool then draws both numbers and writes the remainder in the answer key.
Can I use unusual characters in the title?
Accented Latin letters, the cedilla and quotation marks all pass without trouble. A PDF with no embedded font, though, only has access to a limited character set, the Windows-1252 one: Greek, Cyrillic, Asian scripts and emoji are not in it. The library that writes the file replaces them with a question mark without flagging it, which is the worst possible behaviour. So the tool checks your title character by character and names the ones it will have to drop, with their code point, before writing anything.
Can I rebuild exactly the same sheet?
No, and that is the intended behaviour: every build draws fresh numbers, or the tool would be useless for preparing several lessons. There is no seed to type in, because a seed would suggest a reproducibility the rest of the tool does not guarantee. Keep the PDF you handed out: it is the only copy in existence, and it is on your own machine.
Am I free to use these in my class?
Yes. The sheets you build are yours, with no credit to display, no watermark, no cap on numbers and no account to create. The content of this site is otherwise under a Creative Commons Attribution licence, which covers the site's own texts; a list of randomly drawn sums is not a work anyone could claim anything over in any case.
Why is the answer key on a second page rather than on the back?
Because “on the back” is a printing decision, not a file decision: depending on whether you print single or double sided, the second page will land on the back of the first or on another sheet entirely. Putting it on its own page leaves you the choice, and it also lets you print only the first page for the pupils and keep the second on screen.
A PDF, not a page to print: what comes out of a browser's print dialogue depends on its settings, its margins and its mood, whereas a PDF gives the same sheet on every printer.
VerifyThe proof, step by stepThe network inspector check, explained one gesture at a time, with screenshots.
The cornerThe classroom cornerFor people who teach: a timer with its work cycles, a random draw that does not cheat, worksheets as PDF, and flashcards whose schedule stays inside your own file.