Independent site. CasinoCalcs is not affiliated with or endorsed by People’s Postcode Lottery or any other postcode lottery. Game names are used only to describe the rules the maths is based on.
- Maths reviewed by Josh Miller
- Tested by Diana Westfield
How the postcode lottery works fits in a sentence: your postcode is your ticket, and when it’s drawn, every player who lives there wins. You don’t choose numbers, you pay a monthly subscription (£12.50 per ticket when we last checked, in November 2026), and the draws come to you. The CasinoCalcs calculator above sets what you pay against what comes back as prizes on average, and has a rough go at the question half the country googles: how many of my neighbours are in it?
How the postcode lottery works, draw by draw
Every day of the month there’s a draw for a postcode prize, where each ticket in the winning postcode gets a fixed amount. On top of that come the bigger ones: street prizes, and the headline Postcode Millions draws, where the money is split among the tickets in the winning postcode, so the more neighbours play, the smaller each share. Prize amounts and the exact draw calendar change from time to time, so check the operator’s site for this month’s.
The bit people get wrong is what a second ticket does. It doesn’t give your postcode a second chance. Your postcode either comes up or it doesn’t; a second ticket doubles what you collect when it does.
How much is the postcode lottery?
A ticket costs £12.50 a month, taken in advance by direct debit or card. That’s £150 a year, which is more than most people guess when they sign up at the door. The price has crept up over the years (it was £10 not that long ago), so it’s worth checking what yours actually is.
How many of my neighbours are in the postcode lottery?
Honestly, there’s no way to look it up. The operator doesn’t publish players per postcode, and it wouldn’t be allowed to tell you which houses play. What you can do is estimate. An average UK postcode covers about 15 addresses. If one home in five plays, that’s two or three neighbours on top of you. A block of flats under one postcode can have fifty addresses and a dozen players, which is why a winning tower block makes the local news.
It matters for one reason: shared prizes. When a Postcode Millions prize is split per ticket, a postcode with 40 tickets gets a smaller slice each than one with 4.
How to cancel the postcode lottery
There’s no minimum term, so you can stop whenever you like. The cleanest way is through your account on the operator’s website or by phoning its player support, because that ends the tickets and the payments together. Cancelling only the direct debit at your bank stops the money, but tell the operator as well, or you’ll get letters about missed payments.
One thing people forget: the draws you’ve already paid for still count. If you cancel halfway through a month, your postcode can still win in the draws that month’s payment covered. Check the operator’s own help pages for the current steps, since they change from time to time.
Is the postcode lottery worth it?
If you judge it like a bet, no, and it’s not close. Roughly a third of the ticket money goes back as prizes, at least a third goes to charities and the rest covers running the thing. Put a year in the calculator: £150 in, about £50 back on average, a £100 cost. That average hides how it really plays out, which is nothing for most people most years and a lump for a few streets.
The other way to look at it is that you’re giving about £4 a month to charity and paying the rest for a small chance of a street party. Plenty of people are happy with that deal. Just know it’s the deal. For the odds of your postcode actually coming up, use the postcode lottery odds calculator, and which lottery has the best odds compares it with the National Lottery games.
A subscription is easy to forget about. BeGambleAware.org can help if gambling spending is creeping up.