The odds of winning the UK Lotto jackpot are 1 in 45,057,474. That number gets printed everywhere and means nothing to most people, so the lottery odds calculator above puts it in terms you can feel. To have a 50/50 shot at the jackpot, you’d need about 31 million lines. At £2 a line, that’s around £62 million spent to have a coin flip at winning.
The smaller prizes are a different story. Three numbers on Lotto is 1 in 96. Play two lines every Wednesday and Saturday for a year and the chance you match three at least once is about 89%.
Using the lottery odds calculator
Pick the game, then how many main numbers and bonus balls you want to match. “All of them” gives you the jackpot. Lines and draws let you see the chance over a year of playing, not just one ticket.
Playing something that isn’t on the list? Choose “Custom game” and enter the drum sizes. A 6 from 49 game with no second drum is 49, 6, 0, 0.
Which lottery has the best odds?
For the jackpot, these are the odds per line:
| Game | Format | Jackpot odds |
|---|---|---|
| Thunderball (UK) | 5/39 + 1/14 | 1 in 8,060,598 |
| Irish Lotto | 6/47 | 1 in 10,737,573 |
| Lotto 6/49 (Canada) | 6/49 | 1 in 13,983,816 |
| Set For Life (UK) | 5/47 + 1/10 | 1 in 15,339,390 |
| Lotto (UK) | 6/59 | 1 in 45,057,474 |
| Lotto Max (Canada) | 7/50 | 1 in 99,884,400 |
| EuroMillions / EuroJackpot | 5/50 + 2/12 | 1 in 139,838,160 |
EuroMillions is the same draw in the UK and Ireland, just paid in pounds or euros. Thunderball wins on odds by a distance, but its top prize is fixed and much smaller. The games with the worst odds have the biggest jackpots. That’s not a coincidence. A huge jackpot needs lots of rollovers, and rollovers need nobody to win.
The maths
Lottery odds are just counting. The number of ways to match exactly m of your k numbers from a drum of n is:
P(match m) = C(k, m) × C(n − k, k − m) ÷ C(n, k)
C is “combinations”, how many ways to choose. For the jackpot that’s 1 ÷ C(59, 6) = 1 in 45,057,474. Games with a second drum (EuroMillions Lucky Stars, the Thunderball) multiply in the same sum for that drum.
The bonus balls in UK Lotto, Irish Lotto and Lotto Max come out of the main drum, so the “5 + bonus” tiers aren’t in this calculator. Everything else is.
The lottery is entertainment with a very long shot attached. Play with spare change, not savings. BeGambleAware.org is free and confidential if it stops being fun.