Which scratch-off has the best odds? What 73 games show

No single scratch-off has the best odds on every measure, and the number printed on the back is the least useful one. Overall odds count every prize, including the ones that only refund your ticket. We took the prize tables for all 73 games on the Texas Lottery’s scratch ticket list and worked out two better numbers for each: how often a ticket wins more than it cost, and how much of the money spent comes back as prizes. Both get better as the price goes up.

Which scratch-off has the best odds?

In Texas, the more a scratch-off costs, the better your odds of winning more than you paid, and the more of each dollar it pays back. A $1 ticket returns about 60 cents of every dollar spent on it. A $20 ticket returns 75 cents, and a $100 ticket 80 cents. Within each price, most games are almost identical, so the price you pick matters more than the game.

Every game on the Texas Lottery’s scratch ticket list (opens in a new tab) on October 13, 2026, grouped by price, with the median game shown for each. The overall odds are the lottery’s own. The other three columns are our math from each game’s prize table, which lists every prize amount and how many of each were printed. Our counts match the lottery’s published overall odds for all 73 games.

A few games sit off the pattern, mostly at $5, where three pay back 60 to 65 cents instead of 68. So look up the game in front of you rather than going by its price alone.

What do the overall odds on the back count?

The overall odds are the chance that a ticket wins any prize at all, and “any prize” includes a prize equal to the ticket price. On a $5 ticket, a $5 prize counts as a win, even though you’ve only got your money back. On cheap tickets, those refunds make up close to half of all wins.

Take Super Crossword, a $5 Texas game. Its overall odds are 1 in 4.07 (opens in a new tab). But 43% of its winning tickets pay exactly $5. Leave those out and the odds of winning more than you paid fall to 1 in 7.2. On the $1 game, 3-2-Won!, 47% of the wins are a $1 refund.

At the top of the price range, the gap closes. Three of Texas’s four $100 games have no $100 prize, so every winning ticket pays more than it cost, and the overall odds and the odds of a profit are the same number.

”Free ticket” prizes work the same way

Some states pay their smallest prize as a free ticket rather than cash. That’s a refund too, and it also counts toward the overall odds. When you compare two games, count those prizes the way you’d count a cash prize equal to the ticket price.

How do you work out what a scratch-off pays back?

Multiply each prize by how many of it were printed, add those up, and divide by the number of tickets times the price. The result is the share of the game’s sales that goes back to players as prizes. Lottery sites rarely print this figure, but the prize table on each game’s page has everything you need.

For 3-2-Won!, Texas prints about 16,274,700 tickets at $1. Its prize table adds up to $9,790,993, which matches the lottery’s own line on the game page: “Over $9.7 million in total prizes in this game!” That’s 60.2% of the $16.3 million the game takes in. The other 39.8% pays for the retailer’s commission, the cost of running the lottery and the money the state keeps.

Texas uses the same payout for nearly every game at a price. All eight $2 games pay back 65%. Fourteen of the 16 $20 games pay back about 75%. That’s why the table above shows such tidy numbers, and why switching to a different $5 game usually changes very little.

Does a higher payout mean you lose less?

Per dollar spent, yes. Per ticket, no. A $100 ticket pays back 80 cents on the dollar, but 20% of $100 is $20, so the average $100 ticket loses $20. The average $1 ticket loses 40 cents. A higher payout only saves you money when you’d spend the same total either way.

Here’s that comparison with $20 to spend:

These are averages over millions of tickets. Any one ticket either wins or doesn’t, and most don’t win more than they cost.

Do remaining prizes change your odds?

The published odds are fixed when the game is printed and never change. What changes is what’s left in the stores. If a game has sold most of its tickets and still has most of its top prizes, your odds of hitting one of them can be better than at launch. But top prizes are a small share of the prize money, so your overall odds and the payout barely move.

Across the 73 Texas games, the top prizes are less than a tenth of each game’s prize money, and usually far less. On 3-2-Won!, the top prize is 0.2% of it. So unless you’re playing for the top prize itself, a game with all its top prizes gone pays back almost the same as one with all of them left.

A game can stay on sale with no top prizes left

Every Texas game page carries the same notice: “During closing, games may be sold even after all top prizes have been claimed.” On October 13, 2026, Loteria Azul, a $5 game, had 0 of its 5 top prizes of $100,000 left (opens in a new tab) and was still on the Texas list. An I-Team investigation by Tampa Bay 28 (opens in a new tab) found the Florida Lottery selling six games with no top prizes left. If the top prize is why you’re buying, check the count first. And once a game ends, any winner you’re still holding has a deadline. Florida gives you 60 days to claim it, and ten states give 90.

How the remaining-prize trackers rank games

Sites that rank scratch-offs by remaining prizes need to know how many tickets are left, which Texas doesn’t publish. One way to estimate it is from the small prizes: they get cashed in quickly, so the share already claimed is a rough guide to how far through a game is. By that measure, about 85% of Loteria Azul had been sold. It’s only an estimate, since some winners never cash small prizes at all.

How do you check the scratch-offs in your state?

Your state lottery’s website usually has a page for each scratch game, with its price, overall odds and a prize table showing how many of each prize were printed and how many are left. That’s all you need to run the numbers on this page for your own state:

1. Find the overall odds and the number of tickets. Both are usually on the game page or in the game’s rules.
2. Leave out the refunds. Count how many prizes are worth more than the ticket, and divide the number of tickets by that count. That gives you the odds of winning more than you paid.
3. Work out the payout. Multiply each prize by how many were printed, add them up, and divide by the tickets times the price.
4. Check the top prizes left. Only if the top prize is the reason you’re buying.

If the fun part is finding out whether you won

We make Lodavo, a prize-linked savings app. It gives you free tickets for weekly cash prize draws when you save, and the more you save, the more tickets you get. The money stays in your own bank account, so a week without a win costs you nothing, unlike a losing scratch-off.

Lodavo is live in Canada, where its prizes are smaller than most scratch-off top prizes, and coming to the US one state at a time.

We don’t sell lottery tickets, and no lottery paid to appear on this page. No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited.

So which scratch-off should you buy?

If you’re buying anyway, a few pricier tickets lose less on average than many cheap ones for the same money, and it’s worth checking the prize table before you pick a game. None of that makes a scratch-off a good bet, since every Texas game pays back only 60 to 80 cents of each dollar. Nationwide, state lotteries keep about $35 billion a year after prizes. Prize tables change as games launch and close, so use these figures as a guide and look up the current game before you rely on any of them.

If you play in Canada, our guide to which scratch ticket has the best odds in Ontario runs the same numbers on OLG’s games.