Scratch card odds look friendly on the back of the card: “overall odds 1 in 3.5”. This scratch card odds calculator shows what that really means for the cards you buy. Enter the printed odds, how many cards and what they cost, and the free calculator above gives your chance of at least one winner, the number of winning cards to expect and the average amount that comes back.
Scratch card odds calculator: what “1 in 3.5” means
It means that across the whole print run, one card in every 3.5 has a prize of some sort. With ten £2 cards you’d expect about 2.9 winners, and there’s a 96.5% chance at least one card pays.
The catch is in “a prize of some sort”. On most cards the smallest prize is the price of the card itself, and a lot of the winners are that prize. Winning £2 back on a £2 card counts towards the odds but leaves you exactly where you started. That’s why overall odds can look great while the money still drains away.
The number that matters: payout
The prize payout is the share of all the money spent on a game that goes back out as prizes. Many games publish it in their rules. The example uses 65%: £20 on ten cards returns £13 on average, so the average cost of the fun is £7.
Two cards can have the same overall odds and very different payouts, because one spreads its prizes across lots of small wins and the other saves them for a few big ones. Comparing payout is a better way to choose a card than comparing the headline odds.
Top prize odds
Under “More options” you can add the top prize odds. At 1 in 2,000,000, ten cards give you a 0.0005% chance, or about 1 in 200,000. Some top prizes are claimed early in a game’s life too, so checking which prizes are still available, where the game lists them, is worth doing before buying.
For draw games, the lottery odds calculator works out every prize tier, and the lottery number generator picks random lines for eleven lotteries.
Scratch cards are quick and easy to repeat. Decide how many before you start. BeGambleAware.org is free and confidential if it stops being fun.