The lottery will forever remaining a fascinating concept to most people. The very fact of being able to win thousands, if not millions of pounds, for a tiny stake means that it is a competition that will always appeal to people. From the moment that you select your numbers and buy your ticket, you allow yourself to dream about what might be, should your numbers come in.
It’s not just the biggest prizes that people win, of course. Most lotteries also have smaller prizes that can be won with much more ease and regularity than the jackpot. The question of which lottery has the best odds depends on whether you’re trying to win the main prize or just any prize at all, so we’ll explore the various options in this piece.
The Different Lotteries in the UK
There are many different lotteries available to play in the United Kingdom, so before going any further it is helpful to outline which ones it is that we’re going to be looking at. Even within the National Lottery there are a number of different lottery games to play, after all. To be clear, we’re limiting this piece to lotteries, rather than scratch cards that have jackpots attached.
These are the lotteries that we’ll look at the odds for:
- Lotto
- Lotto Hot Picks
- EuroMillions
- Set For Life
- Thunderball
- Health Lottery
- Postcode Lottery
The National Lottery’s Lotto and EuroMillions draw both have raffles associated with them, but they’re not technically lotteries so we’re not going to look at them here. We’re limiting ourselves to the main draws that take place in order to keep things clear and simple. Obviously, each draw has a different jackpot and other associated prizes.
Hitting the Jackpot
The first place to look is at the full jackpot for each of the lotteries mentioned. The amount that you could win on each one differs wildly, not only from each other lottery but also within the lotteries themselves. You’ll often see EuroMillions prizes go into the tens of million because it has rolled over for a number of weeks.
For that reason we’ll try to take an average prize, where applicable. The important thing, of course, is the odds of winning the jackpot, not how much you’re going to win. Even so, it’s helpful to give you some indication of what the prize is, otherwise the odds themselves are meaningless. For example, short odds aren’t worth a jot if the prize you could win is rubbish.
Whilst the odds of winning the top prize remains the same because you normally need to pick a given amount of numbers to do it, the chances of you winning the top prize all to yourself will alter week by week. If there are double the amount of people playing EuroMillions because the prize is so big, say, then the likelihood of you winning it to yourself reduces.
We’re not going to get dragged down into all that, though, as it just muddies the waters. Still, it’s worth mentioning it here so that you understand that your odds of striking it mega-rich may well be slimmer if there’s been an increase in players of the game for some reason.
Lotto
Let’s start by looking at the traditional Lotto draw. In order to win the main jackpot, you’ll need to match all six of your numbers to the six numbers that are drawn from the machine. There are fifty-nine balls entered into the machine.
To give you some indication of the variation in winnings that you could receive by hitting the jackpot, here’s a look at some of the highest and lowest jackpot amounts since the lottery began, as well as the number of players that matched all six numbers. As a side note, during the early years of the lottery, there were forty-nine balls rather than fifty-nine.
| Date | Jackpot | Winners | Prize Per Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9th January 2016 | £66,070,646 | 2 | £33,035,323 |
| 6th January 1996 | £42,008,610 | 3 | £14,002,870 |
| 27th January 1996 | £40,223,600 | 4 | £10,055,900 |
| 6th April 2016 | £35,133,888 | 1 | £35,133,888 |
| 19th October 2016 | £26,196,380 | 1 | £26,196,380 |
| 4th November 2000 | £20,000,000 | 32 | £625,000 |
| 15th July 2015 | £886,754 | 2 | £433,377 |
| 13th August 2014 | £720,156 | 2 | £360,076 |
The odds of winning the Lotto draw when it is six numbers required from fifty-nine balls in the draw are 1 in 45,057,474. With around 9.79% of the ticket sales going towards the jackpot and the number of potential rollovers limited, the amount that can win will be reduced compared to what it was before.
Lotto HotPicks
Lotto HotPicks is an additional game played alongside the Lotto. It uses the same draw numbers and players can select how many numbers they wish to play with up to a maximum of five. You’ll need to match all five numbers to win the jackpot, which stands at £350,000.
The odds of successfully picking all five numbers in the Lotto HotPicks game are 1 in 834,398. What makes it an appealing game to play is the fact that you would only win around £1,000 for picking five numbers in the main Lotto draw, so £350,000 is much better than that.
EuroMillions
As with the Lotto’s main draw, the amount of money that you can win on the EuroMillioins varies wildly depending on how many weeks the jackpot has not been won for. The maximum number of rollovers that are allowed in EuroMillions is enough to take the jackpot to €190 million. Once it has reached this point it will stay there, regardless of how many weeks it goes unwon for.
The highest jackpot win on the EuroMillions to date was £170,810,000, achieved on the sixth of October in 2017. There was only one winner, taking the prize all to themselves. The jackpot has crept above the £100 million mark a number of times, making the prize a very impressive one to win. That’s why it is such a popular game, despite the long odds.
The odds of winning the jackpot on the EuroMillions are 1 in 139,838,160, with an average jackpot to date of £43,963,829.07. Whilst the odds of picking the winning numbers are obviously stupidly slim, whether that means it is a waste of time comes down to how you view the chance of winning an average of £43 million is.
Set For Life
Set For Life is one of the newest games on the Lottery’s list of ones offered. It promises players the chance to win £10,000 a month for the next thirty years. There are also a number of smaller prizes that we’ll explain about later. It’s the jackpot that we’re most interest in here so it’s that that we’re going to look at the odds of.
Unlike in the Lotto and EuroMillions draws, the Set For Life prize is set and doesn’t rollover if no one wins it. Just as well considering there have been complaints almost since the launch that not many people win it. The National Lottery did ensure that there’s a Super Chance Draw, which runs until at least one person has won the top prize.
Camelot’s response to complaints about people not winning very often was the ‘it’s a lottery’, which is entirely fair. Regardless, the chance of being ‘Set For Life’ stands at 1 in 15,339,390. That three times more likely than winning the Lotto, then, but you’re also going to win around £3.6 million compared to much more than that if the Lotto rolls over enough.
Thunderball
In the Thunderball game, you pick five numbers from between one and thirty-nine, then one Thunderball from between one and fourteen. The main prize is given to anyone that gets five numbers as well as the Thunderball, with the major selling point of the draw being that you won’t need to share your prize with anyone, regardless of how many winners there are.
Keeping the prize all to yourself comes at a prize, though. The odds of you hitting the jackpot on the game are 1 in 8,060,598. That means that it’s more likely that you’ll be hit by lightning or eaten by a shark than walk away with the £500,000. That being said, people do win the top prize, so it’s not a completely lost cause.
Health Lottery
Away from the more regularly beaten track of the various National Lottery draws are some lotteries that are less popular. That doesn’t mean that they’re not worth playing, however, given that the fewer people there are playing the more likely it is that you’ll have any jackpot all to yourself. The first of these lotteries is the Health Lottery.
Launched in October of 2011, it operates on behalf of twelve other lotteries that operate across Great Britain. It does that so as to circumvent the Gambling Act, though each local lottery is licensed by the Gambling Commission. It offers five different draws each week, with tickets bought also seeing people entered into the Mega Raffle each month.
The top prize for the Health Lottery differs, but it will be either £25,000 minimum or or ten percent of the sales for that draw, whichever is greater. There is also a ‘Free Prize Draw’ that boasts a set prize of £100,000 for matching five numbers from fifty. The odds of winning the £100,000 are 1 in in 2,118,760. The odds are better than the Lotto, then, but the prize is smaller.
Postcode Lottery
The last lottery we’ll look at is the Postcode Lottery. It was originally launched in the Netherlands by Novamedia BV in 1989 and then in the north of England in 2005, spreading over the rest of the UK by 2010. The lottery works by quite literally picking a postcode in the country for each of the ten draws a month.
Any player within that postcode will win a prize, but they obviously need to be signed up to the lottery in order to do so. The maximum prize that can be won is either ten percent of the draw proceeds up to £400,000. The odds of winning the postcode lottery’s jackpot are 1 in 1,080,000.
The Other Prizes
Each of the lotteries looked at above also has a series of smaller prizes that can be won depending on different factors. With most of them, the factors are how many balls on each ticket corresponds to the balls drawn out of the machine. The exception is with the Postcode Lottery, but we’ll explain that in more detail when we get to it.
Lotto
When it comes to the Lotto, there are different tiers of prizes depending on how many numbers you match. As you look at the list, you’ll see that the prizes don’t seem to really match up with the odds of winning or the different amount of numbers matched, but that’s the way it works regardless.
| What You’ve Matched | Prize Amount | Approximate Odds |
|---|---|---|
| 5 Numbers & Bonus Ball | £1 million | 1 in 7,509,579 |
| 5 Numbers | £1,750 | 1 in 144,415 |
| 4 Numbers | £140 | 1 in 2,180 |
| 3 Numbers | £30 | 1 in 96.2 |
| 2 Numbers | 1 Lotto Lucky Dip | 1 in 10.3 |
It should also be noted that the odds of winning any prize whatsoever on the Lotto are 1 in 9.3.
Lotto Hotpick
As with the Lotto, there are different prize amounts available depending on how many numbers you pick and then match. Prizes can be capped on the HotPicks game, though this doesn’t necessarily happen all that often. Here’s a look at the lesser prizes and the odds of winning:
| What You’ve Matched | Prize Amount | Approximate Odds |
|---|---|---|
| Pick 1 Match 1 | £6 | 1 in 10 |
| Pick 2 Match 2 | £60 | 1 in 115 |
| Pick 3 Match 3 | £800 | 1 in 1,626 |
| Pick 4 Match 4 | £13,000 | 1 in 30,342 |
EuroMillions
The EuroMillions has twelve different potential prizes in addition to the jackpot, with the prize amount that you could win differing depending on a number of factors. The chance of winning any prize on the EuroMillions is 1 in 13, but that obviously ranges from the huge amounts to the much smaller ones. Here are the odds for the prizes, with the main jackpot removed:
| What You’ve Matched | Average Prize Amount | Approximate Odds |
|---|---|---|
| 5 Numbers & 1 Lucky Star | 1 in 6,991,908 | £309,440.47 |
| 5 Numbers | 1 in 3,107,515 | £49,005.23 |
| 4 Numbers & 2 Lucky Stars | 1 in 621,503 | £2,880.81 |
| 4 Numbers & 1 Lucky Star | 1 in 31,075 | £133.49 |
| 4 Numbers | 1 in 13,811 | £59.70 |
| 3 Numbers & 2 Lucky Stars | 1 in 14,125 | £54.36 |
| 3 Numbers & 1 Lucky Star | 1 in 706 | £9.92 |
| 3 Numbers | 1 in 314 | £8.25 |
| 2 Numbers & 2 Lucky Stars | 1 in 985 | £13.51 |
| 2 Numbers & 1 Lucky Star | 1 in 49 | £5.44 |
| 2 Numbers | 1 in 22 | £2.82 |
| 1 Number & 2 Lucky Stars | 1 in 188 | £7.20 |
Information taken from euro-millions.com/odds-of-winning.
Set For Life
Whilst it might seem as though Set For Life only has a top prize, it actually follows all of the other National Lottery games in having different prize tiers depending on how many numbers you match from your selection to those that are drawn randomly by the machine. The game asks you to choose five numbers from between one and forty-seven and one Life Ball from one to ten.
Here’s the look at the different prizes available for players of Set For Life, with the top jackpot of £10,000 a month for 30 years removed from the table:
| What You’ve Matched | Prize Amount | Approximate Odds |
|---|---|---|
| 5 Numbers | £10,000 Per Month For 1 Year | 1 in 1,704,377 |
| 4 Numbers & The Life Ball | £250 | 1 in 73,045 |
| 4 Numbers | £50 | 1 in 8,116 |
| 3 Numbers & The Life Ball | £30 | 1 in 1,782 |
| 3 Numbers | £20 | 1 in 198 |
| 2 Numbers & The Life Ball | £10 | 1 in 134 |
| 2 Numbers | £5 | 1 in 15 |
The chance of winning any prize on the Set For Life game is 1 in 12.4.
Thunderball
Thunderball isn’t the best-known of the lottery games, but it’s still relatively popular with players. Unsurprisingly, it follows the same path of having different prize amounts available depending on how many numbers you’re able to match from those drawn. The chance of winning any prize at all is 1 in 13, so not terrible odds at all.
Here are those different prize amounts explained depending on what you’ve matched. Once again, the main jackpot has been removed.
| What You’ve Matched | Prize Amount | Approximate Odds |
|---|---|---|
| 5 Numbers | £5,000 | 1 in 620,046 |
| 4 Numbers & The Thunderball | £250 | 1 in 47,416 |
| 4 Numbers | £100 | 1 in 3,648 |
| 3 Numbers & The Thunderball | £20 | 1 in 1,437 |
| 3 Numbers | £10 | 1 in 111 |
| 2 Numbers & The Thunderball | £10 | 1 in 135 |
| 1 Number & The Thunderball | £5 | 1 in 35 |
| The Thunderball Only | £3 | 1 in 29 |
Health Lottery
The Health Lottery is arguably the most confusing of the lotteries on this list with the exception of the Postcode Lottery. That’s because there are a number of different draws each week, with what’s available to win changing depending on the draw. These are the odds for the various prizes on the main draw in which the jackpot can be won, with the jackpot removed:
| What You’ve Matched | Prize Amount | Approximate Odds |
|---|---|---|
| 4 Numbers & Bonus Ball | £10,000 | 1 in 423,752 |
| 4 Numbers | £250 | 1 in 9,631 |
| 3 Numbers & Bonus Ball | £50 | 1 in 4,815 |
| 3 Numbers | £10 | 1 in 224 |
| 2 Numbers & Bonus Ball | £5 | 1 in 224 |
| 2 Numbers | Free Ticket For Future Draw | 1 in 16 |
| 1 Number & Bonus Ball | Free Ticket For Future Draw | 1 in 31 |
The chance of winning a prize of any sort stands at 1 in 9.7.
Postcode Lottery
Last but not least is the Postcode Lottery, which is unquestionably the most difficult of the lot to explain in terms of odds of winning a prize other than the jackpot. That’s because there are different draws taking place throughout the week, which are as follows:
- Monday to Sunday: £1,000 Draw
- Saturday: £30,000 Draw + £10 Draw
- Sunday: £30,000 Draw + £20 Draw
- Once a month: £3,000,000 Draw
The £3,000,000 draw is the one we’ve looked at earlier on, which boasts a maximum prize of £400,000 and will be shared out between all of the houses within a postcode that take part in the lottery. There are approximately four thousand £10 and £20 draws every month, six hundred £1,000 draws and eight £30,000 draws.
It’s all a little bit confusing, then, but here are the odds for the different draws with the exception of the £3,000,000 draw, which we’ve already covered:
| Draw Amount | Approximate Odds |
|---|---|
| £10 | 1 in 270 |
| £20 | 1 in 270 |
| £1,000 | 1 in 1,800 |
| £30,000 | 1 in 135,000 |
These odds are based on players having a 1 month subscription of £10, which is the minimum amount that you need to pay to play. You can pay for more than that, which is worth bearing in mind.
The thing that makes the odds on this lottery so much more complicated to work out than the others is the fact that there is a bit of guesswork involved. According to the Postcode Lottery’s organisers, 60% of all UK postcodes are included in the game. That’s 60% of 1.8 million, which amounts to 1,080,000.
To indicate the working out, there are around eight draws a month for the £30,000, with eight in 1,080,000 equalling a 1 in 135,000 chance. The same logic works for the other draws, too. The key thing about all draws except for the jackpot is that you will win the full amount, regardless of how many players there are in your postcode.
Conclusion
There you have it then. The best odds of winning any prize in any of the main lotteries that we’ve looked at is 1 in 10, which will win you £6 if you Pick 1 and Match 1 in the Lotto HotPicks game. In terms of the main jackpot, the best odds lie with the 1 in 1,080,000 chance you stand of winning the £400,000 jackpot on the Postcode Lottery.
The things that you need to think about are whether the odds of winning a prize are worth it compared to what that prize actually is. The EuroMillions jackpot has the longest odds of victory, for example, but the prize is very much worth winning. Is that the best thing to spend your money on, or would you rather win little and often?