Chance calculator for world lotteries

Pick a lottery, or enter any game format yourself, and see exactly how long the odds are — for the jackpot and for every other combination of numbers you can match.

Every combination, and how rare it is

Matching fewer numbers is easier, but not always by as much as people expect. Which of these rows actually pays a prize differs per lottery — the odds themselves do not.

What the number actually means

Odds of 1 in 139,838,160 do not mean you will win once every 139 million tries. Each draw is independent: the previous result changes nothing about the next one, and numbers that have not appeared for a year are no likelier to turn up than any others.

Buying more lines does raise your chance in proportion — ten lines make it ten times likelier — but ten times almost nothing is still almost nothing. The reliable effect of playing more is that you spend more.

Odds also say nothing about what a win is worth. A jackpot shared between three tickets pays a third each, and a lottery with better odds usually pays out less. That trade-off is the whole design: which lottery is worth playing goes into it properly.

There is one thing your choice of numbers does change, and it is not your chance of winning. Millions of players pick birthdays, which crowds every draw into the numbers 1 to 31. Choosing outside that range wins no more often — but on the rare occasion it wins, it is shared with fewer people. That is the only defensible reason to think about how you pick your numbers.