Lottery odds, side by side

"Which lottery should I play?" is almost always answered by the size of the jackpot on the poster, and that's the worst way to answer it: a big prize always comes bundled with small odds, and the gap between games is wider than most people assume.

The top tier, in numbers

Each row below is the chance that a single ticket, with the minimum quantity of numbers, hits the top prize tier:

Lottery	Single ticket	Odds of the top prize
Dia de Sorte	7 of 31	1 in 2,629,575
Lotofácil	15 of 25	1 in 3,268,760
Super Sete	7 columns	1 in 10,000,000
Lotomania	20 of 100	1 in 11,372,635
Dupla Sena	6 of 50	1 in 15,890,700
Quina	5 of 80	1 in 24,040,016
Timemania	10 of 80	1 in 26,472,637
Mega-Sena	6 of 60	1 in 50,063,860
+Milionária	6 of 50 + 2 of 6	1 in 238,360,500
Mega Millions	5 of 70 + 1 of 24	1 in 290,472,336
Powerball	5 of 69 + 1 of 26	1 in 292,201,338

The distance between the first and the last row is more than a hundredfold. A Powerball ticket is roughly ninety times less likely to hit its jackpot than a Lotofácil ticket is to hit its top tier, and ticket prices do not reflect that gap proportionally.

Winning the jackpot is not the same as winning

Most games pay secondary tiers, and that's where the majority of prizes actually happen. In Lotofácil, matching 11 of 15 already pays, and that's not rare. In Powerball, the small fixed prizes are what most winners actually take home.

They're two different questions with two different answers. Anyone chasing the life-changing win looks at the jackpot column and accepts that the numbers above are what they are. Anyone who wants to win something now and then looks at the odds of any prize tier, which in games like Lotofácil are thousands of times better.

The platform's comparison page shows both columns together, plus the average return per unit wagered, computed from the real prize breakdown of the draws already held.

The return is always below the stake

This holds for every game, without exception: lotteries pay out less than they take in, and that difference is what funds the system and its public allocations. There's no game "with an edge," no strategy that flips the sign, and any method sold on that promise is either wrong or lying.

What you can do is choose consciously where to spend. Between two tickets at the same price, knowing which one returns more on average and which one pays more often is already an informed decision, and that's what the numbers above are for.

Where to see this kept current

The results pages carry the prize breakdown draw by draw, and that's where the average return is computed from: Powerball, Mega Millions, Mega-Sena.