Is an Australian Powerball Ticket Ever Worth It?

By Ryan · Published 2 November 2026

When the Powerball Jackpot climbs past $100 million, the queues at the newsagent get longer and longer. And unlike in the US, an Australian Jackpot is paid in one go, and it's tax free! So at some point, surely a $1.58 game becomes a bargain?

We worked out what a game was really worth in all 446 Powerball draws since 19 April 2018. Let's find out!

1. What is a Powerball game worth?
2. When would a game pay for itself?
3. The catch: sharing
4. How does it compare with the US?
5. So, is a ticket ever worth it?

What is a Powerball game worth?

To work out what a game is worth, we add up every prize divided by its odds. That's called the expected value: what a game would pay back on average, if you could play the same draw millions of times.

In Australia, the prizes below the Jackpot are a share of a prize pool, so they change from draw to draw. Here's what each division paid on average in the 52 draws since 6 November 2025, when the price and the prizes last went up.

All up, the prizes below the Jackpot are worth around 54c per game, or 34c for every dollar spent. Then the Jackpot adds 1 cent per game for every $1,344,904 of Jackpot. With odds of 1 in 134,490,400, that's a lot of Jackpot per cent!

When would a game pay for itself?

For a $1.58 game to pay back $1.58 on average, the Jackpot needs to be at least $139M. It has only happened 5 times since 2018:

So when the Jackpot hits a record, a game really is worth more than its price. Great news, right? Not quite...

The catch: sharing

The bigger the Jackpot, the more games are sold, and the more likely it is that someone else picks the same numbers. If they do, the Jackpot is split. As we found when estimating how many Powerball entries are sold, sales explode as the Jackpot grows.

Take the record $200M Jackpot of 1 February 2024. We estimate around 300 million games were played, so the chance that a winning game would have to share was 89%. Allowing for that, a game paid back 72c for every dollar, not 129c.

Each draw appears twice: once if you had the Jackpot to yourself, and once allowing for the chance of sharing it. The first crosses the $1 line at the biggest Jackpots. The second never gets close: the draws that look like a good deal are exactly the ones where you'd most likely have to share.

How does it compare with the US?

Australians have it better in two ways: the Jackpot is paid in full straight away, and it's tax free. In the US, winners who take the cash get less than half of the advertised Jackpot, and then pay up to 37% federal tax on top of state tax. You can see how much that leaves with our US Powerball payout calculator.

But the US Jackpots are so much bigger that, even after all that, their best draws came out closer to $1 than ours. We worked it out in is a US Powerball ticket ever worth it?

So, is a ticket ever worth it?

Financially, no. The best value a game had in our data was 72c per dollar, in the draw of 1 February 2024 with a $200M Jackpot. Every other draw was worse.

But a Powerball ticket was never really an investment! For a few dollars, you get a few days of dreaming about what you'd do with the money. Just keep it to what you're happy to spend.

Curious how long it would take you to win? Our Powerball simulator lets you play thousands of draws with virtual money. Or check what the current Jackpot is.

Our figures are estimates. They use today's price and prizes for every draw, and assume numbers are picked at random.