Powerball vs Mega Millions (2026): which one gives you better odds?

Powerball and Mega Millions are about equally hard to win, near 1 in 290 million a play. What settles most of the Powerball vs Mega Millions question is the price: a Powerball play is $2 and a Mega Millions play is $5. So for the same money, Powerball gives you two and a half times as many jackpot chances and a prize of some kind more than twice as often. Mega Millions pays more when you do win a small prize, because a multiplier comes built into every ticket.

What’s the difference between Powerball and Mega Millions?

Both are the same kind of game: pick five numbers and one extra ball, and match all six for a jackpot that grows until someone wins it. The difference is the price. Powerball is $2 a play with an optional $1 Power Play. Mega Millions is $5 a play with the multiplier already included.

Prices, odds and prizes as of October 2026, from the Powerball prize chart (opens in a new tab) and the Mega Millions prize chart (opens in a new tab). The per-$10 odds, spend per prize and cents per dollar are our math from those charts. California pays every prize below the jackpot from a pool shared among that draw’s winners, so its amounts differ.

The two rows people usually compare are the ones that matter least. The jackpot odds per play are nearly the same, and Mega Millions’ “better overall odds” is true per ticket and false per dollar, because its ticket costs two and a half times as much.

Powerball: how it works, and what a $2 play buys

A Powerball play is five white numbers from 1 to 69 and one red Powerball from 1 to 26, drawn Monday, Wednesday and Saturday at 10:59 p.m. ET (opens in a new tab). Match all six and you win or share the jackpot, at 1 in 292,201,338. Match the five white balls without the Powerball and you win $1 million, at about 1 in 11.7 million.

Below that the prizes are fixed: $50,000 for four white balls and the Powerball, $100 for four or for three plus the Powerball, $7 for three or for two plus the Powerball, and $4 for one plus the Powerball or the Powerball alone. Your overall odds of winning something are 1 in 24.87.

Power Play is a separate $1 bet on the same ticket

Power Play costs $1 more per play (opens in a new tab) and multiplies every prize except the jackpot by 2, 3, 4, 5 or 10. The 10x only comes up when the advertised jackpot is $150 million or less. A Power Play ticket that matches five white balls pays a flat $2 million, whatever multiplier is drawn.

The multiplier is 2x or 3x about six times in seven. Even so, it is the better buy on the numbers. On a $3 Power Play ticket, the fixed prizes return about 26 to 27 cents of every dollar, against about 16 cents on a plain $2 ticket. It does nothing for your jackpot odds.

Powerball also went on sale in the United Kingdom on July 21, 2026 (opens in a new tab). US prices, odds and prizes didn’t change, but more tickets are now being sold into each jackpot.

Mega Millions: how it works, and what changed at $5

A Mega Millions play is five white numbers from 1 to 70 and one gold Mega Ball from 1 to 24, drawn Tuesday and Friday (opens in a new tab) at 11 p.m. ET. Match all six for the jackpot, at 1 in 290,472,336. Match the five white balls alone and you win $2 million to $10 million, depending on the multiplier, at about 1 in 12.6 million.

Every $5 play comes with a multiplier from 2x to 10x, printed on the ticket when you buy it. The Mega Millions prize chart (opens in a new tab) lists each prize at every multiplier: the Mega Ball alone pays $10 to $50, one white ball and the Mega Ball pays $14 to $70, and four white balls and the Mega Ball pay $20,000 to $100,000. You get 2x on almost half your tickets and 3x on almost a third, so the multiplier averages out at 3x.

The April 2025 changes

The $5 game started with the draw of April 8, 2025 (opens in a new tab). Before that, Mega Millions cost $2, like Powerball, and the multiplier was an extra-cost option. The new game took one ball out of the Mega Ball drum, which made the jackpot slightly easier to hit (1 in 290,472,336, down from 1 in 302,575,350), raised the starting jackpot from $20 million to $50 million, and improved the overall odds from 1 in 24.12 to 1 in 23.08.

Fewer people bought the $5 ticket. CNN reported in December 2025 (opens in a new tab) that Mega Millions had sold 495 million tickets since the change, while Powerball sold just over 2 billion over the same months. Jackpots grow with ticket sales, which is why Powerball’s have tended to climb higher since. For the draws of October 14 and 16, 2026, the estimated jackpots were $562 million on Powerball (opens in a new tab) and $403 million on Mega Millions (opens in a new tab).

Which has better odds, Powerball or Mega Millions?

Powerball, once you count what you pay. Mega Millions wins on paper, at 1 in 23.08 for any prize against 1 in 24.87, but that’s per ticket, and a Mega Millions ticket costs $5 against $2. Per dollar, Powerball pays some prize once every $49.74 you spend and Mega Millions once every $115.40.

The jackpot works the same way. The odds per play are almost equal, 1 in 292 million on Powerball and 1 in 290 million on Mega Millions. But $10 buys five Powerball plays and two Mega Millions plays, which puts your jackpot odds at about 1 in 58 million on Powerball and 1 in 145 million on Mega Millions. If the jackpot is what you’re playing for, Powerball gives you about two and a half times the chance for the same money.

Which pays more when you win a smaller prize?

Mega Millions, by a wide margin. Its smallest prize is $10, and the second prize is never less than $2 million. Powerball’s smallest prize is $4, and 92% of all Powerball wins are that $4. Even with Power Play, most Powerball wins come to $8 or $12.

That’s why the return from the fixed prizes favors Mega Millions over a plain Powerball ticket: about 22 cents back on every dollar, against 16. A Powerball ticket with Power Play turns that around at 26 to 27 cents. In every case, most of the money stays with the lottery, which is how lotteries pay for the jackpot and the state programs they fund. The jackpot only adds back a meaningful amount when it’s very large, and then it’s shared more often and taxed at the top rate. Scratch-offs put most of their prize money into small prizes instead, and our guide to which scratch-off has the best odds works out what each price pays back.

Every prize in both games is cash. In Canada, most Lotto Max and Lotto 6/49 wins are a free ticket rather than money.

Can you play both?

Yes, and the schedule makes it easy: Powerball on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, Mega Millions on Tuesday and Friday, so the two never share a night. Many stores sell both at the same counter, and the state that sold the ticket handles the claim for either game.

The cost is the part to look at. One plain play of each, every draw, is $6 a week of Powerball and $10 of Mega Millions, which comes to $832 a year. Which game you pick changes your odds at the margins. How often you play changes the total you spend.

If you do win big, the claim works the same way for both: the jackpot comes as cash or as 30 payments over 29 years, each 5% bigger than the last. Our guide to what to do if you win the lottery covers deadlines and the cash-or-annuity choice, and the lottery tax guide covers what each state takes.

A draw where you keep what you put in

We make Lodavo, a prize-linked savings app, and it’s built for the part of a lottery that’s actually fun: having a draw to look forward to every week. You get free tickets for weekly cash prize draws when you save, and the more you save, the more tickets you get. Your money stays in your own bank account, so there’s nothing to lose when your number doesn’t come up.

The prizes are much smaller than a Powerball jackpot. What’s different is that you don’t spend anything to play. Lodavo is live in Canada and coming to the US one state at a time.

We don’t sell lottery tickets, and neither Powerball nor Mega Millions paid to appear in this comparison. No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited.

Which one to buy

Buy Powerball, with Power Play, if you want the most chances for your money: about two and a half times the jackpot odds per dollar of Mega Millions, a prize more than twice as often, and the best return from the fixed prizes of the three tickets here. Buy Mega Millions if you’d rather win less often but win more when you do, since its smallest prize is $10 and its second prize is at least $2 million. Prices and prize charts change, as Mega Millions’ did in April 2025, so check your state lottery’s page before relying on any figure here.

If you play in Canada, our Lotto Max vs Lotto 6/49 comparison runs the same numbers on the Canadian games.