Which lottery has the best odds?

Jackpot odds of 14 major games

Ranked from best to worst jackpot odds using each game's published format. Formats, prices and rules change, so check the official site. "Pick 6 from 49" style games have better odds than the headline US games because they have far fewer combinations.

Why bigger jackpots have worse odds

A lottery that wants a giant jackpot needs lots of sales, and to make winning rare enough that the jackpot rolls over and grows, which creates headlines and attracts more players. It does that by making the odds much longer. Powerball changed its matrix in 2015 and Mega Millions did the same in 2017 and again in 2025, each time to make jackpots more likely to build. The longer the odds, the bigger the jackpots get, and the more tickets sell. The game that gives you the best odds is rarely the one with the biggest prize.

Odds of winning anything

The odds of the jackpot are only part of the story. Powerball has about a 1 in 24.87 chance of winning some prize, and Mega Millions about 1 in 23, though most of those prizes are small. Games with more prize tiers or lower-tier prizes can have better overall odds. Daily numbers games commonly give about a 1 in 1,000 chance for a fixed $500 straight prize in Pick 3, and 1 in 10,000 for $5,000 in Pick 4.

Odds per dollar

A fair comparison also looks at price. A $5 play has a different cost than a $1 play. Jackpot chance per dollar is the jackpot odds divided by the number of plays you get for a dollar. Using the prices above, Powerball ($2 per play) gives about 1 in 584 million per $1 spent, Mega Millions ($5) about 1 in 1.45 billion, and Canada's Lotto 6/49 (about C$3) gives about 1 in 42 million per C$1. Cheap games with fewer combinations win by a mile.

Payout share matters too

The share of sales returned as prizes tells you the average cost of playing. Many large draw games return around half. State lotteries often report higher rates for scratch-off tickets, commonly 60% to 70% or more, though the odds of the top prizes are poor. Pool lotteries such as CryptoDrawz return 90% to the prize pool. The higher the payout share, the less you lose per dollar on average.

A practical way to choose

1. 1Decide what you want: a dream (big jackpot) or a decent chance of something (smaller games).
2. 2Check the payout share, which tells you the average cost.
3. 3Compare jackpot odds per dollar, not per ticket.
4. 4Check how prizes are paid, how much tax applies and whether you can verify the draw.
5. 5Set a budget and stay under it.

Use our odds comparison table and the lottery odds calculator to check any game.

Daily games: a different kind of odds

Many states run daily number games with a tiny set of combinations. In Pick 3, you pick three digits from 0 to 9, so there are 1,000 combinations, and a straight play has 1 in 1,000 odds for a typical $500 prize on a $1 play. Pick 4 has 10,000 combinations and pays about $5,000 for $1. The payout ratio is about 50% to 60% of the true odds, which is where the operator's cut comes from. These games give the best odds of winning something notable of any lottery, and because they are drawn once or twice a day they are the easiest to overspend on. See the Pick 3 and Pick 4 generators and our budget guide.

Scratch-offs and instant games

Scratch-off tickets list the number of prizes remaining at each level, which lets you see the real odds of each prize. Overall odds of winning something are often 1 in 3 to 1 in 5, but most prizes are the ticket price or slightly more. The top prize odds can be 1 in several million. Payout rates for scratch-offs are commonly higher than for draw games, but the fast pace makes them easy to overplay. Check the state's published "odds and prizes remaining" pages.