How you play
Prize amounts
What happened
| Match | Prize | Times | Won | Odds |
|---|
Each line plays two rounds per draw, and each round is checked with the real chance of every match (6 from 59 plus the bonus ball). Prize amounts are editable under Prize amounts: check them against your ticket, because the operator can change them. Play money only.
Independent site. CasinoCalcs is not affiliated with or endorsed by the National Lottery or Allwyn. Game names are used only to describe the rules the maths is based on. Every combination has exactly the same chance of being drawn: no generator, wheel, lucky, hot or cold number can improve your odds.
- Maths reviewed by Josh Miller
- Tested by Diana Westfield
This UK Lotto simulator lets you do the thing nobody can afford to do for real: play the same £2 line every Wednesday and Saturday for 50 years and count the result. Press Play and it runs every draw in a couple of seconds. Spoiler: you’ll lose most of what you put in, but the way it happens is more interesting than you’d think. It’s free and it’s all play money.
What a lotto simulator shows you
Since June 2026 every Lotto line is played in two rounds per draw, which doubles your chance of each prize for the same £2. A line still has to match 6 from 59 in one round to win the jackpot, so per line it’s about 1 in 22.5 million. The CasinoCalcs simulator checks both rounds on every line.
Here’s one typical ten-year run of one line, twice a week:
| Result | Times | Per line odds |
|---|---|---|
| Match 2 | about 200 | 1 in 5 |
| Match 3 | about 20 | 1 in 48 |
| Match 4 | 0 or 1 | 1 in 1,090 |
| Match 5 | almost never | 1 in 72,207 |
| Jackpot | never | 1 in 22,528,737 |
That’s 1,040 lines and £2,080 spent, with roughly £400 to £450 coming back. Run it a few times and you’ll see the spread: the odd Match 4 lifts a run, and that’s about as good as it gets.
Play for 500 years
Set the years to 500 and press Play again. Now you’ll usually see a Match 5 or two, and still no jackpot. Playing twice a week, the average wait for six numbers is around 216,000 years. Pick ten lines a draw and it’s still 21,600. Lotto isn’t built to be won by any one person. It’s built so somebody wins.
A note on the prize amounts
The lower prizes are fixed amounts per round, and the defaults here are £1 for 2, £10 for 3, £50 for 4, £1,000 for 5 and £1 million for 5 plus the bonus ball. The operator can change those, and Match 2 rules have changed before, so open Prize amounts and check them against your ticket. The odds don’t change: those come from the 59 balls.
For the odds on paper, the lotto odds calculator lists every tier. Picking numbers? The UK Lotto number generator is as good as any system, which is to say every line is equally likely. There’s also a EuroMillions simulator and the original Powerball simulator.
Want to try another game? The lottery simulator plays EuroMillions, Thunderball, Irish Lotto, 6/49, Lotto Max or your own format.
A simulator makes the cost visible. If the real number worries you, BeGambleAware.org is a good place to start.