Odds of Winning the Lottery: Powerball, Mega Millions and Pick 3 Compared

The odds of winning the lottery jackpot are 1 in 292,201,338 for Powerball and 1 in 290,472,336 for Mega Millions. In Virginia’s daily games, used here as the worked example, a Pick 4 exact-order play wins its $5,000 top prize 1 in 10,000, and a Pick 3 exact-order play wins its $500 top prize 1 in 1,000.

The odds of winning the lottery, game by game

The two national jackpot games are almost the same size of target. Their jackpot odds sit within 0.6% of each other. Powerball draws 5 of 69 white balls plus 1 of 26, Mega Millions 5 of 70 plus 1 of 24, and the two matrices land close together.

The gap to the daily games is the large one. A Powerball jackpot is 29,220 times harder to hit than a Virginia Pick 4 top prize. Pick 3 odds are shorter again, by a factor of ten, because each digit added multiplies the outcomes by 10.

Any prize at all comes much more often. Powerball prints 1 in 24.87 for winning something on a $2 play. Mega Millions does not print an any-prize figure. Its 1 in 23.07 is our computation from the prize chart on megamillions.com, for a $5 play. Most of those wins are the smallest tiers, so the two figures say little about what a ticket is worth.

What a play returns

Virginia publishes enough to measure this directly. Its Pick 3 and Pick 4 exact-order plays return 50% of the stake on average, and the any-order plays return 48%. The table gives the any-order prizes for a $1 play. A 50-cent play wins half.

Any-order chances depend on how many digits in the pick repeat. A Pick 3 any-order play with three different digits (6-way) pays $80 at 1 in 166.7. One with a repeated digit (3-way) pays $160 at 1 in 333.3. The price of more ways to win is a smaller prize, and the return falls from 50% to 48%.

For the jackpot games the published figure is coarser. Mega Millions says 50% of its sales are paid back as prizes. That is a statement about the whole pool of tickets. It does not describe any one play.

The lottery odds calculator, worked by hand

Every figure in the comparison table comes from one formula. Choosing k numbers from n, where order does not matter, gives C(n, k) = n! / (k! (n – k)!) possible tickets. Your odds of the top prize are 1 in that number. If the game draws a second ball from a separate pool of m, multiply by m: C(n, k) times m.

Digit games are simpler. Each position is a digit from 0 to 9, so each digit multiplies the count by 10. Pick 3 has 1,000 outcomes (000 to 999). Pick 4 has 10,000 (0000 to 9999). Exact order means only one of them wins the top prize.

Take a classic pick 6 of 49 game. C(49, 6) = 49! / (6! (49 – 6)!) = 13,983,816. A single line has a 1 in 13,983,816 chance of matching all six. That is the whole calculation.

Powerball needs two steps. Choosing 5 white balls from 69 gives C(69, 5) = 11,238,513 combinations. The red Powerball comes from a separate pool of 26, so the total is 11,238,513 times 26 = 292,201,338. Mega Millions runs the same way: C(70, 5) = 12,103,014, times 24 for the gold Mega Ball, gives 290,472,336.

The formula works for any pick-k-of-n game whose rules you can read. Odds can only be compared across games this way when both games publish their matrix.

Fifty years of every draw

Long odds are hard to picture, so here is a fixed scenario. The assumption: one play in every draw, 52 weeks a year, at the current odds.

Powerball draws on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, 156 times a year. One line in every draw for 50 years is 7,800 plays. That gives about a 1 in 37,462 chance of one jackpot.

Mega Millions draws on Tuesday and Friday, 104 times a year. Fifty years of every draw is 5,200 plays, for about a 1 in 55,861 chance. It is longer than Powerball’s figure because there are fewer draws, while the per-draw odds are almost equal.

For an even chance at one Powerball jackpot, the same one-play-per-draw habit would have to run for about 1,298,324 years. Each draw is independent, so no number of past losses moves the next draw’s 1 in 292,201,338.

The biggest lottery jackpots

The ten largest jackpots across both games, from the official lists on powerball.com and megamillions.com, are below. Every amount is the advertised annuity figure. A lump-sum payment is smaller.

Six of the ten are Powerball. The largest is Powerball’s $2.04 billion on 7 November 2022. Mega Millions’ largest is $1.602 billion on 8 August 2023, fifth on the combined list. Four of the ten Powerball runs, and none of the Mega Millions ones, came after August 2023. The most recent is $1.817 billion on 24 December 2025.

A jackpot that size does not change the odds of the draw. The 7 November 2022 ticket faced the same 1 in 292,201,338 as any other Powerball line. If you play, set a limit first; our responsible gambling guide covers how.

*Sources: powerball.com prize chart, home page and news of 4 November 2026; megamillions.com How to Play, FAQs and Jackpot History; Virginia Lottery Pick 3 and Pick 4 pages (valottery.com); all read 02:21-02:23 UTC on 5 November 2026. Combinations computed from each game’s published matrix.*