UK Prize Draw Odds Index

• The longest median odds of the 7 categories with open draws are in Car Draws, at 1 in 120,000, about 63 times the Collectibles median of 1 in 1,900.
• 9 of the 10 longest-odds draws open today sell tickets at 5p or less, so a cheap ticket is no sign of short odds.
• 218 of the 822 draws (27%) price a one-in-a-thousand chance under £1; 64 (8%) charge £100 or more for the same chance.
• 178 draws advertise instant wins. The median odds of their end prize are 1 in 58,749, against 1 in 5,000 for the 644 draws without them: about 12 times as long.
• The cheapest one-in-a-thousand chance open today costs £0.01: a £0.02 ticket in a draw capped at 500 tickets.

Each row is the median across the open paid draws in that category. Categories are ordered from the shortest median odds to the longest. The last column is what a one-in-a-thousand chance costs in the middle draw of each category.

House Draws has no open draws today, so it has no row.

These are the draws where a one-in-a-thousand chance at the top prize costs least. The figure is a yardstick rather than a purchase: it puts a 500-ticket draw and a 500,000-ticket draw on one scale, so a cheap ticket into a huge draw and a dear ticket into a small one can be compared directly.

At a given ticket price, the longer the odds, the more a realistic chance costs. 9 of these 10 sell tickets at 5p or less, which is why the ticket price on its own says little about your odds.

178 of the 822 draws advertise instant wins in their title. The odds below are for the end prize only, the one drawn from every ticket sold. Instant prizes are extra chances on top, with their own odds that each operator sets per game and that this index does not record. The instant-win competitions page lists the games themselves.

• Which draws count. Every UK prize draw in our directory that is open at the time above: listed as active, with a closing date still to come. That was 823 draws. 1 is left out: 1 free draw with no ticket price to compare, leaving 822.
• Odds. One ticket’s chance at the top prize is 1 in the entry cap: the maximum number of tickets the operator says it will sell. The cap is the operator’s own published figure. We never estimate one, and a draw without a published cap is not listed in the directory at all.
• Cost of a 1-in-1,000 shot. Ticket price × entry cap ÷ 1,000: what buying a thousandth of the tickets would cost. A £1 ticket in a 100,000-ticket draw gives £100; a £2 ticket in a 5,000-ticket draw gives £10, so the dearer ticket is the cheaper chance.
• Medians. The middle value once the draws are sorted. With an even number of draws it is the mean of the two middle values. Odds are rounded to whole tickets and money to the penny. We use medians rather than averages because a handful of very large draws pulls an average away from the typical one: today the mean cap is 119,370 tickets against a median of 9,999, and 23 draws are capped at a million tickets or more.
• Instant wins. Our data has no instant-win field, so a draw counts as an instant-win draw when its title says so (“instant win”, “instawin” or “instant-win”), the same rule our instant-win page uses. Those draws are included, and their odds are for the end prize only.
• Where the data comes from. Our directory collects each draw’s ticket price, entry cap and closing date from the operator’s own listing, a few times a day. This page recalculates from that data; the time at the top of the page is when this copy was calculated.

• The odds assume every ticket sells. If a draw undersells, each ticket’s real chance is better than the figure here. What happens then depends on the operator’s terms: some draw anyway, some pay a cash alternative instead of the prize, some extend the closing date.
• Prize value is not compared. The cost of a 1-in-1,000 shot measures odds per pound, not prize per pound. We do not publish a value for any prize, because an operator’s stated value cannot be checked independently. A cheap shot at a small prize is not the same as a dear one at a car.
• Free entries share the cap. UK prize competitions must offer a free postal entry route with the same odds as a paid ticket, so the odds here apply to a free entry too.
• One ticket at list price. We use the single-ticket price the operator lists. Multi-ticket bundles, discount codes and per-person entry limits are not modelled.
• It is a snapshot of the draws we track. Draws open and close every day, so the figures move. They describe the operators in our directory, not every prize draw run in the UK.

The figures on this page are free to cite and republish with a credit and a link to this page. Copy the line below; the month updates with the data.

Source: PrizeDrawsDaily UK Prize Draw Odds Index, October 2026. https://prizedrawsdaily.co.uk/uk-prize-draw-odds-index

Writing about prize draws and need a breakdown we have not published, such as one operator or one category over time? Get in touch. For which operators currently run the shortest odds, see our guide to the best-odds competition sites, and for how we assess the operators themselves, read how we review.