Which lottery REALLY gives you the best odds of winning? National Lottery, Premium Bonds and Omaze
- Our experts crunch the numbers on what to enter and how many tickets to buy
The National Lottery has been making millionaires out of lucky players for so long that most households will have an idea of how they would spend the cash if their ticket was to win.
But does the Lottery give players better or worse odds of winning compared with other prize draw games such as the Omaze Million Pound House Draw or Premium Bonds with NS&I? We look at YOUR chances with the experts.
Doris and Keith Stanbridge, from Dorking, celebrate winning £10,000 every month for the next 30 years through the National Lottery
The odds of winning Lotto millions
Players of the Lotto game have been lured in by jackpots as big as £66 million since 1994. You can buy tickets for £2 from local retailers or online and must choose six numbers between one and 59.
Punters may dream of buying a sprawling property in a leafy home county or jetting off to Spain for a glitzy retirement in the sun.
Tens of millions of people play the lottery every year and nearly seven in ten adults have entered the National Lottery at least once – almost 36 million people – in 2023, according to the latest available data.
Prizes are based on how many of a player’s six numbers match the numbers in the draw, which takes place every Wednesday and Saturday.
The odds of winning any prize with one ticket are 9.3 to one, according to the National Lottery. This means that for every one win you’re likely to have 9.3 losses.
This sounds promising but prizes range from the big jackpot to a free Lucky Dip line, worth £2, which is where players are given an entry with a randomly generated number sequence.
The odds per ticket are 10.3 to one for a Lucky Dip prize (two balls); 96.2 to one for £30 (three balls); 2,180 to one for £140 (four balls); 144,415 to one for £1,750 (five balls); 7.5 million to one for £1 million (five balls plus bonus ball); and 45 million to one for the jackpot, which varies in size depending on the draw (six balls).
A Lottery spokesman says: ‘It’s important to note the odds for any National Lottery game remain the same, no matter how many people play that game. Whereas the odds when entering into a raffle depend on the number of entries.’
However, players can marginally increase their odds, by buying more tickets.
If players increase their spend to £10 - buying five tickets - players have five chances out of 45 million to match the numbers instead of one out of 45 million, the National Lottery says.
Michael Dunne-Willows, of the Royal Statistical Society, says the probability of winning increases as players buy more tickets with different numbers.
With £10 (five tickets), the probability improves to one in 9.1 million for the top prize, according to his calculations. This rises to one in 901,149 with a £100 purchase of 50 tickets.
Unlike with Premium Bonds from National Savings & Investments (NS&I), Lottery players only have one shot at the draw and lose their stake if they don’t win – so excessive play is not encouraged.
Players of the Lotto game have been lured in by jackpots as big as £66million since 1994. You can buy tickets for £2 from local retailers or online and must choose six numbers between one and 59
Dr Dunne-Willows says: ‘In terms of expected winnings, the Lottery and the Omaze prize draw are quite similar.
‘Playing either of these is like putting all your eggs in one basket and hoping for the big win even though it’s extremely likely you’ll never win anything.’
But you do have the chance to win big with the Lottery.
While jackpot prizes vary, June’s big payouts ranged from £2 million to £11.5 million.
Smaller prizes are fixed and do not have to be shared with the number of winners, but the jackpot does.
If ten people match the winning numbers for a £10 millon jackpot, they only get £1 million each.
If a common number sequence is drawn then players with the winning ticket might have to share their winnings as more people are likely to have chosen the numbers for their ticket.
BEST FOR: Players who can afford to lose their original stake and prefer the small chance of winning big instead of smaller, more regular payments.
Are Premium Bonds better?
Premium Bonds are the nation’s most popular savings product, with more than 22 million people holding them.
The Bonds are issued by Treasury-backed bank NS&I and holders can invest between £25 and £50,000. Every £1 buys one Bond.
Instead of paying out regular interest like most savings bonds, each Premium Bond is entered into a prize draw every month and winners can receive prizes from £25 to £1 million. The Bonds are tax free and, unlike the Omaze and Lottery games, savers never lose their original stake.
The money up for grabs is sourced from the prize fund, which is currently 4.40 pc.
An NS&I spokesman says: ‘The prize fund for each draw is a month’s interest on all eligible Bonds in the draw, so the more Bonds sold, the bigger the prize fund.
‘ERNIE – the electronic random number indicator equipment – generates the winning numbers randomly and then we match them against eligible Bonds.’
As the number of Bonds eligible for the draw changes every month, the bank has to toggle the number of each prizes available at each level in order to keep the same headline odds of winning a prize, says Greig Bingham, of actuarial consultancy Broadstone.
Premium Bonds are the nation’s most popular savings product, with more than 22million people holding them
This means that while the headline odds of winning a prize doesn’t vary from month to month, the number of prizes available at each level – and the odds of winning these prizes – does change.
In June there was £124.1 billion invested in Bonds eligible for the prize draw. There were two £1 million prizes up for grabs on the top en and on the lower end there were 1,469,766 prizes worth £25.
The odds of winning any prize with a £1 holding is 21,000 to one – far worse than the 9.3 to one chance of winning any prize with a Lottery ticket. With one bond it was a 62.05 billion to one for the top prize in June. Again, these are worse odds than winning the jackpot with a Lottery ticket.
But remember, Lottery tickets cost double the price of one Bond and you can get your stake back with Premium Bonds.
This means that savers may be more inclined to pump more money into Premium Bonds. NS&I prizes also start at £25 – more than 12 times the lowest Lottery prize (a £2 Lucky Dip).
With a £10 holding, the odds change to 2,100 to one for any prize - still worse than the lottery. It was 6.2 billion to one for the jackpot in June.
Even savers with £1,000 in Premium Bonds have worse odds of winning any prize - or even the jackpot - than Lottery players who just buy a single ticket. This is because with £1,000 in Premium Bonds, savers have odds of 21 to one of winning any prize and odds of 62.05 million to one of winning the top £1 million in June.
The more Bonds you hold, the more likely you are to win a prize.
If you hold the maximum £50,000 in Premium Bonds – the odds are 1.24 million to one for the £1 million jackpot.
Someone with £50,000 worth of Bonds can expect to win 29 prizes in a year, totalling £1,825, with June’s odds and prize fund rate.
While this is not a dazzling jackpot, Dr Dunne-Willows says Premium Bonds can actually give savers the best of both worlds.
‘If a person holds a good amount of Premium Bonds (more than 25,000), they can expect to get regular payouts from the monthly prize draw, like a savings account, while also enjoying the excitement of maybe winning the million each month, like a lottery.’
‘You can be more certain of smaller prizes – but you must accept you won’t get the fancy new house or a massive multi-million pound roll-over like you might with Omaze or the Lottery.’
BEST FOR: Savers who can’t afford to lose their original stake and prefer smaller, regular payments but want to be in with a chance of winning a decent – but not huge – jackpot.
Premium Bonds Winners
| Prize | Area | Value of bond |
| £1,000,000 | Hertfordshire | £13,500 |
| £1,000,000 | Cumbria | £50,000 |
| £100,000 | Southampton | £20,000 |
| £100,000 | Havering | £5,000 |
| £100,000 | North Yorkshire | £49,999 |
| £100,000 | Outer London | £10,000 |
| £100,000 | Outer London | £5,000 |
| £100,000 | Kirklees | £100 |
Does Omaze give you a good chance
Instead of cash, the Omaze Million Pound House Draw offers players the chance to win glamorous houses all over the country.
The raffle-style draw has become increasingly popular in recent years, starting with the Cheshire House in 2020. The organisation has since offered more than 25 houses to lucky winners.
A £5.25 million London House is currently up for grabs. It’s a four-bedroom and four-bathroom modern home in the desirable Victoria Park village, Hackney in north-east London.
From left, Lucy, Jules, Chris and Esme Milnes won a £2.5million property in Dorset through the Omaze draw
The house comes furnished, boasts a spa and is wrapped up with a £250,000 cash bonus.
Hefty stamp duty and conveyancing fees are often a hindrance to movers, but these are sorted for Omaze winners.
Omaze advertises that winners can put the property up for sale if they choose. It also says long-term rental of the house will provide the lucky winner with £12,000 a month.
While it’s a for-profit organisation, Omaze guarantees its charity partners a minimum £1million in donation or 17 per cent of ticket sales – whichever is greater.
Getting your hands on one of these fancy homes sounds like a dream scenario. But what are the chances a player will actually win a house?
Omaze operates as a raffle-style draw and assigns a code to entries. When players buy multiple entries, it assigns all entries the same code, which means it has a greater chance of being drawn by its random number generator.
The odds of winning depend on how many entries there are to each draw, so it changes each month, and Omaze keeps its cards close to its chest on how many entries there are.
A spokesman says: ‘Omaze cannot provide precise odds of winning due to varying factors, including how many entries there are for each particular draw.
‘The number of entrants varies from draw to draw - but is typically in the hundreds of thousands.
‘We always guarantee a winner for each grand prize and all sub-prizes without exception.’
The number of entries to the draw could well be far higher than the hundreds of thousands of people that typically enter, as online players must spend a minimum of £10, which buys 15 entries.
Ten of these bundles – at £100 – will buy 150 entries.
Online players can only buy tickets in batches and the price of one entry works out to be different depending on how many are bought.
With a £10 one-off package you can buy 15 entries to a draw, so each entry at this smallest ‘ticket’ package costs 67 pence, cheaper than the £1 cost of one Premium Bond and the £2 cost of one Lottery ticket.
Players get 40 entries with the £25 package, working out at 63 pence for each entry.
While it is impossible to calculate the exact odds of winning without knowing the number of raffle tickets sold, if for example 100,000 people are in play for one game and each buy ten tickets, there would be one million tickets in play.
This means a player would have odds of 99,999 to one of winning the jackpot prize - far higher than the odds of winning the Lottery’s top prize. Even if one million people were to enter the draw with ten tickets, you would have better odds than you would have with a Lottery jackpot win. However, be aware that some entrants may purchase many tickets, thereby altering these odds.
Mr Bingham says that increasing the amount of money you spend on entries won’t proportionally increase your odds of winning a prize, unlike with Premium Bonds. This is because they get more entries for their money.
For example, if someone increases their Omaze spending by five times, from the £10 package to the £50 one, then their number of entries doesn’t proportionally increase from 15 to 75.
Instead, players get 85 entries for £50, working out at 59 pence per entry.
Mr Bingham says: ‘It is encouraging you to purchase more tickets.’
There are subscription options, too. A £10 a month subscription buys 30 entries into the draw – at 33 pence an entry – and £25 each month buys 100 entries – at 25 pence per entry.
There’s no option to buy different numbers of entries outside of the prescribed packages, unless you enter by post.
Postal entries are free – but players can only send one entry per envelope so the cost of stamps (75 pence for second class) will need to be added per entry.
BEST FOR: Players who don’t mind unknown odds but want the chance of winning a glamourous prize. Punters must be okay with relocating, or arranging to sell or let the house to access cash tied up in the property.
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