Which lottery has the best odds? The US games, ranked (2026)

The lottery with the best odds is the smallest one you can buy. In Florida, a $1 Pick 3 bet on three digits in exact order wins its $500 top prize 1 time in 1,000, and a five-number state game like California’s Fantasy 5 pays its jackpot 1 time in 575,757. Powerball and Mega Millions sit at the far end, near 1 in 290 million. Picking a game with better odds doesn’t change how much you get back, though. Most draw games return about half of what players spend, so better odds come with a smaller prize, not a better deal.

Which lottery has the best odds?

The three-digit daily games come first, then the $1 five-number games most states run, then the state lottos, with the national jackpot games last. The ranking follows the number of possible combinations: the fewer numbers a game draws from, the better your odds at its top prize, and the smaller that prize is.

Figures from each game’s official page, prize chart or how-to-play guide, read in November 2026. We worked one out ourselves: Mega Millions doesn’t publish an overall figure, so its 1 in 23 is the sum of the tier odds on its prize chart.

The difference is easiest to see at the same price. One Powerball play costs $2. In California, the same $2 buys two Fantasy 5 tickets, and each one is about 500 times as likely to hit its jackpot. That jackpot starts between $60,000 and $80,000 and is split if more than one ticket matches. A Powerball jackpot can run into the hundreds of millions.

Why do smaller lotteries have better odds?

Because there are fewer ways to fill in the ticket. Fantasy 5 asks for five numbers from 1 to 39, which can be chosen 575,757 different ways. Powerball asks for five from 1 to 69 plus a Powerball from 1 to 26, which can be chosen 292,201,338 ways. Every combination is equally likely, so your odds are 1 in however many there are.

Pick 3 is the extreme case. Any three digits from 000 to 999 is a ticket, so there are only 1,000 of them. That’s why its top prize is a few hundred dollars and not a few million.

The big games are built the other way on purpose. A huge pool of combinations means the jackpot often goes unwon, and every draw without a winner makes it bigger. A jackpot that climbs into the hundreds of millions sells far more tickets than a $60,000 one ever could.

Where Millionaire for Life fits

Millionaire for Life sits between the state lottos and the national jackpot games. You pick five numbers from 1 to 58 and a Millionaire Ball from 1 to 5, which gives 22,910,580 combinations. That makes its top prize, $1 million a year for life (or $18 million in cash), about 13 times easier to win than a Powerball jackpot. It took the place of Cash4Life (opens in a new tab) and Lucky for Life, which both held their last draw in February 2026. Florida, which sold Cash4Life, didn’t join Millionaire for Life.

What do a lottery’s overall odds actually count?

Every prize, including a free ticket. That makes some games look far easier to win than they are. 2by2’s overall odds of 1 in 3.59 include two free-ticket prizes at 1 in 8 each. Take those out and a cash prize comes up about 1 time in 36. Florida Lotto’s 1 in 7.61 includes a free Quick Pick for matching two numbers, which comes up 1 time in 8.58. Without it, the odds of a cash prize are about 1 in 67. New York’s Take 5 works the same way: its 1 in 8.77 includes a free Quick Pick for matching two numbers.

The national games don’t hand out free tickets, but their smallest prizes are close to the ticket price. Powerball’s most common prize is $4 on a $2 play, at 1 in 38.32. Mega Millions’ is at least $10 on a $5 play, at 1 in 35. Millionaire for Life’s two most common prizes are both $8 on a $5 play.

So two games with the same overall odds can pay very differently. A game that pays $8 on a $5 ticket and one that gives you another ticket both count those as wins.

Which lottery pays back the most?

Most draw games pay back about half. New York puts 50% of Take 5 sales into prizes, and up to 40% of its Lotto sales. Pick 3 works out to exactly half: a $1 exact-order bet pays $500 and wins 1 time in 1,000. Scratch-offs pay back more, from about 60% to 80% in Texas, as our guide to which scratch-off has the best odds works out. Keno pays back about 48% to 75%, depending on the state and how many numbers you pick. Our guide to keno odds and payouts by state breaks it down by state.

Which states pay back the most?

Across all their games, scratch-offs included, state lotteries paid out $68.5 billion in prizes on $103.3 billion of sales in 2023, or 66.3%. The national games pay the same fixed prizes almost everywhere, so the gap between states comes from the games each one designs itself.

Our math from the US Census Bureau’s state lottery table for 2023 (opens in a new tab): prizes divided by ticket sales after retailer commissions. We left out five states whose lotteries also run video lottery machines (Oregon, South Dakota, West Virginia, Rhode Island and Delaware), since their figures mix in machine play and come out between 21% and 48%. Virginia climbed to 80% in 2024 (opens in a new tab), still the highest of any state. Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Nevada and Utah have no state lottery.

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The best game for what you want to win

If it’s the top prize you care about, Pick 3 and the $1 five-number games come out far ahead, with Powerball and Mega Millions last. If you just want to win something, look past the overall odds to what the small prizes pay, since some of them are a free ticket. And if it’s money back, most draw games return about half while scratch-offs return more. Mega Millions changed its price in April 2025 and Cash4Life ended in February 2026, so your state lottery’s game page is the place for current numbers.

If you play in Canada, our guide to which lottery has the best odds in Canada ranks Lotto Max, 6/49 and each province’s own games the same way.