Lottery ticket calculator: what a ticket costs on average
To price a ticket you need three things: what it costs, the prize for each number of matches, and the chance of each match. The calculator counts the chances and you type the rest. For a 6 from 49 ticket a prize of any kind is 1 in 54, and the jackpot is far rarer.
Prizes in an advertisement are headline figures, and a shared jackpot pays each winner less. The calculator uses exactly what you type. Over 100 tickets the average loss is ₹5,038, while the chance of even one jackpot is 1 in 1,39,839.
The calculator runs in your browser and sends nothing anywhere, so you can try any numbers you like.
Common questions
How do I work out what a lottery ticket costs on average?
Multiply each prize by the chance of winning it, add those amounts up, and compare the total with the ticket price. The calculator counts the chances and uses the prizes you type, so a ticket that returns 49.6% of its price loses about half of it on average.
What happens to the odds if a jackpot is shared?
The odds do not change, but what a win pays does. A jackpot split between three winners pays each of them a third. The calculator uses the jackpot you type, so enter what you expect to receive, not the headline figure.
What are the odds of a 6 from 49 jackpot?
1 in 1,39,83,816, because there are 13,983,816 ways to choose 6 numbers from 49 and one of them is the draw. Matching 5 is 1 in 54,201, matching 4 is 1 in 1,032 and matching 3 is 1 in 57. These are exact counts, not estimates.
Does the calculator work out tax on winnings?
No. It leaves out tax, fees and the way a shared jackpot is split. Take those from your lottery’s own rules, and treat the average cost here as the best case.
What does the average cost of a ticket mean?
It is what a ticket loses over very many tickets, not what the next one will do. Most tickets win nothing and a few win a lot, so the average is a summary of a very uneven spread.