"Best odds" sounds like one question but it is really three. Do you want the best chance of winning anything? The best chance of a life-changing amount? Or the most chance per pound spent? Each question has a different winner, and the games that advertise hardest are rarely the ones that come out on top.
Every UK game side by side
| Game | Price | Top prize | Top-prize odds | Any prize |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lotto HotPicks (Pick 5) | £1 | £175,000 per Round | 1 in 417,200 | 1 in 417,200 |
| EuroMillions HotPicks (Pick 5) | £1.50 | £1,000,000 | 1 in 2,118,760 | 1 in 2,118,760 |
| Thunderball | £1 | £500,000, never shared | 1 in 8,060,598 | 1 in 13 |
| Set For Life | £1.50 | £10,000/month for 30 years | 1 in 15,339,390 | 1 in 12.4 |
| Lotto | £2 | Jackpot share, min £1m each | 1 in 22,528,738 | 1 in 4.9 |
| EuroMillions | £2.50 | Jackpot, capped €250m | 1 in 139,838,160 | 1 in 13 |
| Powerball | £4 | Pooled jackpot | 1 in 292,201,338 | 1 in 24.87 |
HotPicks games have a single all-or-nothing prize per Pick level, which is why their "any prize" odds equal their top-prize odds — you either match everything you picked or win nothing. Lotto HotPicks' figure covers its two Rounds under the June 2026 format.
The comparison the price tags hide
A £1 Thunderball line and a £4 Powerball line are not the same bet, so raw odds mislead. The honest way to compare is odds per pound: multiply each game's top-prize odds by its price, as if every game cost £1. On that footing:
- Lotto HotPicks Pick 5 — effectively 1 in 417,200 per £1. Nothing else is close.
- EuroMillions HotPicks Pick 5 — 1 in 3,178,140 per £1 for a fixed £1m.
- Thunderball — 1 in 8,060,598 per £1 for a fixed £500,000.
- Set For Life — 1 in 23,009,085 per £1 for the 30-year annuity.
- Lotto — 1 in 45,057,476 per £1 for at least a £1m share.
- EuroMillions — 1 in 349,595,400 per £1 for the big one.
- Powerball — 1 in 1,168,805,352 per £1. The famous jackpot is, per pound, about 3.3 times harder to hit than EuroMillions — the same 1-in-292-million draw costs a UK player £4 where EuroMillions charges £2.50 for far better jackpot odds.
So which should you play?
Lotto
1 in 4.9 per line across its two Rounds — though the most common "win" is small, and a £2 line returning £1 is still a loss.
Lotto HotPicks Pick 5
£175,000 per Round at 1 in 417,200 for £1. The catch: match all five or win nothing at all.
Thunderball
£500,000 fixed, four draws a week, £1 a line. If ten people match, all ten get the full amount.
EuroMillions
If only a nine-figure sum will do, EuroMillions delivers it at roughly 3.3× better odds per pound than Powerball.
The caveat that applies to all of them
Every game on this page keeps roughly half of ticket sales, so the average player loses money on every line of every game — there is no "smart" lottery, only different shapes of the same long shot. Odds-per-pound tells you which long shot is priced most fairly, not that any of them is a good investment. Decide what a ticket is worth to you as entertainment, and only ever play what you can afford to lose.
The maths behind every figure here is worked through step by step in how lottery odds are calculated — or test the "hot numbers" theory yourself with our fair-draw simulator.
The generator has one-tap presets for every game in this table.