Which lottery has the best odds in Canada and Ontario?

Which lottery has the best odds depends on what you mean by "best": the best chance at the jackpot, the best chance of winning anything at all, or the most money returned for each dollar spent. Those three answers point to different games. This guide compares the national draws (LOTTO MAX, LOTTO 6/49, DAILY GRAND) and Ontario's regional games using the odds the lottery corporations publish, and adds the payout figures OLG states for its instant tickets and the return we calculated from the DAILY KENO pay table.

The short answer

• Best jackpot odds: LOTTARIO, at 1 in 4,072,530 per $1 play. Of the national games, DAILY GRAND has the best top-prize odds at 1 in 13,348,188 per $3 play.
• Best odds of winning any prize: MEGADICE LOTTO, at 1 in 3.69 overall, and OLG instant tickets, at around 1 in 3.3 to 1 in 3.8.
• Most money returned: instant tickets, which OLG lists at about 67% to 72% payout. Draw games return less, and DAILY KENO returns between 42% and 55% depending on how many numbers you pick.
• Worst jackpot odds per dollar: LOTTO MAX, at 1 in 33,446,140 per $6 play since April 2026.

Jackpot odds compared

The table uses the odds each operator publishes for one play. The last column divides by the price so games with different ticket prices can be compared fairly.

You can check most of these numbers yourself. LOTTO 6/49 and ONTARIO 49 both ask you to match 6 numbers out of 49, and there are exactly 13,983,816 ways to choose 6 from 49. DAILY GRAND is 5 numbers from 49 (1,906,884 combinations) times a Grand Number from 1 to 7. LOTTARIO picks 6 from 45, which gives 8,145,060 combinations, and each $1 play gives you two chances, which halves the odds to 1 in 4,072,530.

The jackpot odds measure your chance of winning, not the size of the prize. LOTTARIO's jackpot is far smaller than LOTTO MAX's because fewer people play and the pool is built from its own sales. Better odds at a smaller prize is the normal trade-off.

What changed with LOTTO MAX in 2026

From the draw of Tuesday, April 14, 2026, LOTTO MAX went from $5 to $6 per play, the first price increase since the game launched in 2009. Each play now has four selections of seven numbers instead of three, drawn from 1 to 52 instead of 1 to 50. BCLC's announcement gives the effect: the chance of winning any prize improved from about 1 in 7 to about 1 in 5.8, while the jackpot odds per play moved slightly the wrong way, from 1 in 33,294,800 to 1 in 33,446,140.

The arithmetic checks out. Choosing 7 numbers from 52 gives 133,784,560 combinations; four selections per play divides that by 4. Under the old format, 99,884,400 combinations from 50 divided by three selections gave 33,294,800. The jackpot cap rose from $80 million to $90 million, and each draw now adds $100,000 MAXPLUS prizes, one for each million in the jackpot. MAXMILLIONS prizes still start when the jackpot reaches $50 million.

Odds of winning any prize

If what you want is to win something, the overall odds matter more than the jackpot odds. These are the "any prize" figures the operators publish:

Treat a free play prize as a refund of one ticket, not a win. On LOTTO 6/49, matching 2 of 6 numbers gives a free play at 1 in 8.3, so most of the "1 in 6.6" comes from getting your ticket price back. On DAILY GRAND, matching only the Grand Number gives a free play at 1 in 12.3, and the first cash prize is $4 for 1 of 5 plus the Grand Number at 1 in 19.7.

Which lottery gives the most money back?

Odds tell you how often you win. The payout percentage, the share of sales returned as prizes, tells you how much. For a casino game this is the RTP, and the same idea works for lottery tickets:

• Instant tickets. OLG's October 2026 lottery bulletin lists payouts of about 67% to 71.72% on its new instant tickets, with overall odds between 1 in 3.29 and 1 in 3.80. That is the highest return among OLG's lottery products.
• LOTTARIO. OLG's odds page defines the first prize pool as 51% of the draw's sales, plus any rollover, minus the fixed prizes and the $50,000 Early Bird pool. So all prizes together come to about 51% of sales, before rollovers: about half of what is spent comes back.
• DAILY KENO. Twenty numbers are drawn from 70 and you pick between 2 and 10. Using OLG's pay table, we calculated the return for each spot. The 2-spot game, which pays $7 on a $1 bet at 1 in 13, returns 55.1%. The 5-spot returns 42.0%, the lowest. The 10-spot, which pays up to $250,000 on $1 and also pays $2 for matching none of your numbers, returns 44.8%. Our keno odds guide lists the odds and return for every spot.

For comparison, the casino games in our guide to the highest RTP casino games return 96% or more. In expected value, a lottery ticket costs far more per dollar than almost any casino game. The lottery's appeal is the size of the top prize, not the return.

Ontario's lottery games ranked by odds

Searches for "which Ontario lottery has the best odds" usually mean OLG's draw games. Here they are, best to worst by top-prize odds per dollar spent:

1. LOTTARIO, 6 numbers from 1 to 45, two chances per $1 play, plus an Early Bird draw of $50,000 shared among winners at 1 in 4,967.
2. MEGADICE LOTTO, $2, with an instant dice roll at purchase (top instant prize $7,500 at 1 in 279,936) and a nightly draw of 6 numbers from 1 to 39 for $100,000.
3. ONTARIO 49, $1, a $2,000,000 top prize at 1 in 13,983,816.
4. DAILY GRAND, $3, Monday and Thursday draws.
5. LOTTO 6/49, $3, with the separate Gold Ball draw.
6. LOTTO MAX, $6, Tuesday and Friday draws.

The LOTTO 6/49 Gold Ball draw works differently from the main draw. Each $3 play gets a 10-digit number, and one number wins every draw, so the odds depend on how many plays were sold: OLG's example is 1 in 5 million if 5 million plays are sold. The winner then gets either $1 million or the Gold Ball jackpot, which starts at $10 million and grows by $2 million each time a white ball is drawn, up to $68 million. On the first draw of a cycle there are 29 white balls and one gold, so the chance that the winner gets the jackpot is 1 in 30.

Do Quick Picks or "hot" numbers change the odds?

No. Every combination has the same chance in every draw, whether you choose it or the terminal does, and past results do not affect future draws. The one thing your choice can change is how many people you share with if you win: popular patterns, such as birthdays (1 to 31) or a straight line on the slip, are picked by more players, and top prizes on LOTTO 6/49 and DAILY GRAND are shared among all winning tickets.

Lottery winnings and tax

In Canada a lottery prize is generally not taxable income, because it is a windfall rather than income from a source. Interest or investment income you later earn on the prize is taxable. Our guide to whether gambling winnings are taxed in Canada covers the rule and its exceptions. For annuity prizes such as DAILY GRAND, group wins and giving winnings to family, see our guide to whether lottery winnings are taxed in Canada.

Play within a budget

You must be 18 to buy lottery tickets in most of Canada and 19 in British Columbia and Atlantic Canada; our guide to the gambling age in Canada has the detail for each province. Decide on a weekly amount before you buy and stick to it, and do not chase a jackpot by buying more plays: at 1 in 33 million, even 100 LOTTO MAX plays a week leaves your odds at about 1 in 334,000 per draw. Free help is available from ConnexOntario at 1 866 531-2600, and our responsible gambling page lists services in every province. Once you have played, our guide to checking lottery tickets online lists the official apps for each province and the claim deadlines.

Sources: OLG: LOTTO 6/49 odds and payouts, OLG: Gold Ball draw, OLG: DAILY GRAND odds and payouts, OLG: About DAILY GRAND, OLG: ONTARIO 49 odds and payouts, OLG: LOTTARIO odds and payouts, OLG: How to play LOTTARIO, OLG: MEGADICE LOTTO odds and payouts, OLG: How to play MEGADICE LOTTO, OLG: DAILY KENO odds and payouts, OLG Lotto Post, October 2026, BCLC: The new LOTTO MAX is here, Loto-Québec: LOTTO MAX prize structure and odds (pre-2026 format)