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Lottery Odds Calculator
Use this free lottery odds calculator to see your real chance of winning. Pick Powerball, Mega Millions, EuroMillions, or a UK Lotto game — or build a custom game — and the calculator shows the exact jackpot odds, the total number of possible tickets, and the odds of every prize tier. No guessing, no myths: just the combinations.
How lottery odds work
Lottery odds are combinations, not opinions. When a game asks you to pick 5 numbers out of 69, the number of possible tickets is the number of ways to choose 5 numbers from 69, written C(69,5) and read as "69 choose 5". Order does not matter — the ticket 4, 12, 23, 38, 51 is the same ticket as 51, 38, 23, 12, 4 — so the count is far smaller than it would be if order mattered, but it is still enormous. The formula is C(n,k) = n! ÷ (k! × (n−k)!), where n is the pool and k is how many numbers you pick.
Jackpot odds = 1 in (total combinations)
Powerball works in two stages. First, 5 white balls are drawn from 69, which gives C(69,5) = 11,238,513 combinations. Then a Powerball is drawn from a separate pool of 26. Every white-ball combination can pair with any of the 26 Powerballs, so the total number of tickets is 11,238,513 × 26 = 292,201,338, and only one of them wins the jackpot. That is where the famous 1 in 292,201,338 comes from. Mega Millions is nearly identical — 5 balls from 70 gives C(70,5) = 12,103,014 combinations, times a Mega Ball from 25, for a total of 302,575,350 and jackpot odds of 1 in 302,575,350, slightly longer than Powerball.
Games without a bonus ball are simpler. The UK Lotto asks for 6 numbers from 59, so the total is C(59,6) = 45,057,474 and the jackpot odds are 1 in 45,057,474 — much shorter than the American games, because picking 6 from 59 in one pool creates fewer combinations than two pools multiplied together. EuroMillions sits in between: 5 from 50 gives C(50,5) = 2,118,760 combinations, and 2 Lucky Stars from 12 gives C(12,2) = 66 combinations, so the jackpot total is 2,118,760 × 66 = 139,838,160.
The prize-tier table below the result uses the same counting for every tier. To match exactly 4 of the 5 white balls, you must pick 4 of the 5 drawn numbers and 1 of the 64 numbers that were not drawn: C(5,4) × C(64,1) = 5 × 64 = 320 winning combinations for that tier, before the bonus ball is considered. Dividing the jackpot total by the combinations in a tier gives that tier's odds. That is why matching 4 white balls plus the Powerball is 1 in 913,129, while matching 4 without the Powerball is 1 in 36,525 — the bonus ball multiplies the odds by 26 in one direction and divides them by 25 in the other.
Two common myths are worth clearing up. First, no set of numbers has better odds than any other. Birthday numbers, patterns on the playslip, and quick picks all have exactly the same chance of being drawn, because the draw is random. The only real difference is sharing: popular numbers are picked by more people, so if they win, the prize is split more ways. Second, buying more tickets helps only in direct proportion. Ten Powerball tickets give odds of 10 in 292,201,338, or about 1 in 29,220,134. A hundred tickets is about 1 in 2,922,013. More tickets raise your chance, but they never turn a near-impossible event into a likely one — and the cost of the tickets usually outweighs the expected return by a wide margin.
Worked example
What are the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot?
Step 1: Count the white-ball combinations — C(69,5) = 69! ÷ (5! × 64!) = (69 × 68 × 67 × 66 × 65) ÷ (5 × 4 × 3 × 2 × 1) = 11,238,513.
Step 2: Multiply by the Powerball pool — 11,238,513 × 26 = 292,201,338 possible tickets.
Step 3: Only one ticket wins the jackpot, so the odds are 1 in 292,201,338.
Step 4: As a percentage, that is 1 ÷ 292,201,338 × 100 = 0.00000034%.
To put that in perspective, if you bought one ticket every week, you would expect to wait about 5,619,257 years for a jackpot win — roughly 5.6 million years. Buying 100 tickets a week would still leave an expected wait of about 56,193 years. The calculator above shows the same figures for any game you pick, including the odds of each smaller prize tier.
FAQ
What are the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot?
The odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are 1 in 292,201,338. That comes from choosing 5 correct numbers out of 69, which has 11,238,513 possible combinations, and then matching the Powerball out of 26. Multiplying 11,238,513 by 26 gives 292,201,338 possible tickets, and only one of them wins the jackpot.
What are the odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot?
The odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot are 1 in 302,575,350. You pick 5 numbers out of 70, which has 12,103,014 possible combinations, and then match the Mega Ball out of 25. Multiplying 12,103,014 by 25 gives 302,575,350 possible tickets, and only one wins the jackpot — slightly longer odds than Powerball.
Does buying more tickets improve my lottery odds?
Yes, but only in direct proportion to how many you buy, and the improvement is tiny against odds this long. Ten Powerball tickets give you odds of 10 in 292,201,338, or about 1 in 29,220,134 — still a very long shot. A hundred tickets is about 1 in 2,922,013. Buying more tickets raises your chance, but it never turns a near-impossible event into a likely one.
Do some lottery numbers have better odds than others?
No. Every combination of numbers has exactly the same chance of being drawn, because the draw is random. Birthday numbers, lucky numbers, and quick picks all have identical odds of winning the jackpot. The only real difference is that popular numbers are more likely to be shared with other winners, so an unusual combination is less likely to split the prize if it wins.
What is the chance of winning any prize in Powerball?
The overall chance of winning any Powerball prize is about 1 in 24.87. That includes the small prizes for matching just the Powerball, or one white ball plus the Powerball. Most of those prizes are $4 or $7, so the chance of winning something is reasonable while the chance of winning the jackpot stays at 1 in 292,201,338.