Which Australian Lottery Has the Best Odds?
Australians love a flutter, and with a lottery drawn on six nights of the week, there's no shortage of chances to become a millionaire. Powerball, Oz Lotto, Saturday Lotto and Weekday Windfall all promise life-changing prizes, but they're far from equal when it comes to the odds.
So which one gives you the best chance of winning? And is the lottery with the biggest Jackpot really the one worth playing? Let's find out!
- The Australian lotteries at a glance
- Which lottery has the best odds of winning the top prize?
- Which lottery has the best odds of winning anything?
- How much does each lottery pay back?
- Do System entries improve your odds?
- So, which lottery should you play?
The Australian lotteries at a glance
Each lottery has its own format: how many numbers you pick, how many balls are in the barrel and how much a game costs. Here is how they stack up.
| Lottery | Drawn on | Numbers | Price per game |
|---|---|---|---|
| Australia Powerball | Thursday | 7 from 35, plus 1 Powerball from 20 | $1.58* |
| Oz Lotto | Tuesday | 7 from 47 | $1.50* |
| Australia Saturday Lotto | Saturday | 6 from 45 | $0.95* |
| Weekday Windfall | Monday, Wednesday and Friday | 6 from 45 | $0.68* |
* Prices are for a single standard game. Tickets are sold in sets of games, with small differences between states.
Which lottery has the best odds of winning the top prize?
To put it simply, the fewer numbers you need to guess, and the fewer balls there are to pick them from, the better your odds.
That makes Saturday Lotto and Weekday Windfall the clear winners, sharing the best odds at 1 in 8,145,060, as both draw 6 numbers from 45. The prizes are quite different however: Saturday Lotto's Division 1 pool, usually several million dollars, is shared between its winners, while every Weekday Windfall winner walks away with a guaranteed $1 million.
| Lottery | Odds of winning the top prize | Playing one game a week, on average |
|---|---|---|
| Australia Saturday Lotto | 1 in 8,145,060 | 156,636 years |
| Weekday Windfall | 1 in 8,145,060 | 156,636 years |
| Oz Lotto | 1 in 62,891,499 | 1,209,452 years |
| Australia Powerball | 1 in 134,490,400 | 2,586,354 years |
At the other end of the table sits the Australia Powerball. Picking 7 numbers from 35 and the Powerball from a separate barrel of 20 gives a whopping 134,490,400 possible combinations, more than 16 times as many as Saturday Lotto. That's also why its Jackpots grow so large: they get won far less often.
Here is a quick analogy to put these numbers into perspective: imagine a road lined with a lottery ticket every 10cm, and only one of them is the winner. For Saturday Lotto, the road would stretch around 815km, almost the drive from Sydney to Melbourne. For the Powerball, it would be over 13,400km long, further than flying from Sydney to Los Angeles!
Want to feel those odds for yourself? Give our Australia Powerball simulator a go and see how long it takes to hit the Jackpot.
Which lottery has the best odds of winning anything?
Here's where things get interesting, as the order changes completely! With 9 prize divisions, the Australia Powerball pays a prize on 1 in 44 games, including for matching as few as 2 numbers and the Powerball.
| Lottery | Prize divisions | Odds of winning any prize |
|---|---|---|
| Australia Powerball | 9 | 1 in 44 |
| Oz Lotto | 7 | 1 in 50 |
| Australia Saturday Lotto | 6 | 1 in 85 |
| Weekday Windfall | 6 | 1 in 85 |
Saturday Lotto and Weekday Windfall, which had the best odds for the top prize, now come last. Their lowest division needs 3 numbers and a supplementary, or 1 or 2 numbers and both supplementaries, which is a lot harder than it sounds.
How much does each lottery pay back?
Odds alone don't tell the whole story. A lottery that wins more often could still pay out tiny prizes, so what we really want to know is: for every dollar spent, how much comes back?
We can work this out by combining the odds of each division with the average prizes actually paid over the last 12 months.
| Lottery | Lower divisions, per $1 | Top prize at the current Jackpot, per $1* |
|---|---|---|
| Australia Powerball | 36c | 14c ($30,000,000 Jackpot) |
| Weekday Windfall | 35c | 18c |
| Oz Lotto | 30c | 64c ($60,000,000 Jackpot) |
| Australia Saturday Lotto | 21c | 129c ($10,000,000 Jackpot) |
* Assuming the Jackpot isn't shared, which flatters the numbers. As we found when estimating how many Powerball entries are sold, the bigger the Jackpot gets, the more tickets are sold and the more likely it is to be split.
The Australia Powerball pays back the most through its lower divisions. But whichever lottery you play, every dollar spent returns well under a dollar on average. That's no surprise: it's how lotteries fund their prizes, running costs and contributions to government.
Do System entries improve your odds?
Yes and no! A System entry lets you pick more numbers, which covers more combinations and improves your odds of winning. The catch? It's priced as the number of standard games it covers, so your odds per dollar spent stay exactly the same.
Our guide to System and Pick entries has the odds and prices of every entry type.
So, which lottery should you play?
It all depends on what you're hoping to win:
- For the best chance at a life-changing prize: Saturday Lotto or Weekday Windfall, at 1 in 8,145,060. Weekday Windfall guarantees $1 million per winner and is drawn three times a week, while Saturday Lotto's prize is usually larger but shared.
- For the best chance of winning anything: the Australia Powerball, with a prize on 1 in 44 games.
- For the biggest Jackpots: the Australia Powerball, as long as you're happy with the longest odds. And if even that isn't big enough, here's how playing overseas lotteries from Australia works.
Still can't decide? Try them all for free with virtual money in our lottery simulators. Who knows, you might hit the Jackpot on your first go!
Gambling should be fun. If it isn't anymore, free and confidential support is available from Gambling Help Online on 1800 858 858.