What Percent of Scratch-Offs Win?

About one ticket in four wins something

Look at the back of almost any scratch-off and you will find a line like “Overall odds: 1 in 4.13.” That means roughly one ticket in four wins a prize.

Across the 2,692 games Scratch IQ tracked on September 13, 2026 in 41 states plus Washington, D.C., the middle game sits at about 1 in 3.86. Most games land between 1 in 3.1 and 1 in 4.8. So a rough rule of thumb: one in three to one in five tickets is a winner.

That sounds pretty good. Then you look at what those wins actually pay.

Most “winners” just give you your money back

Scratch IQ counts every prize still left in every game that publishes a prize table. On September 13, 2026 that was about 1.57 billion unclaimed prizes across 2,689 games, the three that do not publish one being the only gap. Here is how they break down:

• 40 percent of them pay the price of the ticket or less. Win one of those on a $5 ticket and you get $5 back, or less than you paid.
• 74 percent of them pay twice the ticket price or less. On that same $5 ticket, that is $10 or under.

So four out of every ten winning tickets hand you back what you already spent. Three out of four pay you less than double. The “1 in 4 tickets wins” line on the back is true, and it is also doing a lot of work.

Why the small prizes are stacked that way

None of this is hidden. A scratch-off game is designed before it prints. The designers decide how many prizes there will be at each level, and those counts get filed with the state lottery where anyone can look them up.

Lots of tiny prizes is what makes a game feel alive. Think about how a $5 win actually goes: most people hand it straight back across the counter for another ticket. A game that paid only in big chunks would leave almost every buyer with nothing, and they would stop coming back. Small prizes keep the player at the counter. That is the design working as intended, not a con.

Frequency and value are different numbers, and only frequency is printed on the ticket. What comes back per dollar spent is the one that decides whether a game is worth comparing, and you have to go looking for it.

The number that answers the real question

EV/Dollar puts both into one number: how often a game pays, and how much it pays when it does. It is the average amount that comes back per dollar spent, across many tickets in a given game, using the prizes that are still out there today.

Across all active games the middle value is about 69 cents per dollar. That is the average return, not a promise about the next ticket you buy. Any single ticket is still random.

That number moves as prizes get claimed. A game that has already paid out most of its big prizes returns less than the same game did on day one, even though the odds printed on the back never change. Scratch IQ recomputes it every day from the counts each state lottery publishes. The methodology page shows the formula.

The bottom line

Roughly one scratch-off in four wins something. But 40 percent of all remaining prizes pay the ticket price or less, and 74 percent pay double or less. The odds line on the back of the ticket counts a dollar back on a dollar ticket as a win.

To compare games on what actually comes back rather than how often something happens, look at EV/Dollar for the games on sale where you live. Florida’s games are ranked on the Florida rankings, and every other state is on the state list.