How the numbers are worked out
For every game, the Florida Lottery publishes each prize level with how many were printed, how many are still unclaimed, and the odds. This app downloads that list and does four things with it.
1. Estimate how many tickets are left
The lottery doesn't say how many tickets remain unsold, so we estimate it. Small prizes ($1 to $500) are printed by the hundreds of thousands and cashed quickly at the counter, so the share of them still unclaimed closely tracks the share of tickets still unsold. If 30% of the small prizes are left, about 30% of the tickets are left.
2. Divide what's left by what's left
Return per $1 is the value of every unclaimed prize, divided by the estimated tickets still out there, divided by the ticket price. This is the long-run average: what you'd get back per dollar if you could buy every remaining ticket. When a game sells through its tickets faster than its big prizes, its return goes up. That's the idea of "80% of tickets sold but only 20% of prizes claimed," applied to a whole game, which is the level the lottery reports.
3. Count prizes the way you'd actually be paid
- Advertised uses face value. Lifetime prizes count as 20 years of payments, the guaranteed minimum.
- Cash payout uses the lump sum a winner actually receives. Prizes of $1 million or more and lifetime prizes are paid as annuities with a cheaper cash option. Where the lottery's winner reports show real payouts for a game, we use those. Otherwise we assume 60% for $1M+ prizes and 75% for lifetime prizes, close to recent Florida payouts.
- After tax also takes your chosen federal rate off prizes over $5,000, the amount the lottery withholds on. Florida has no state income tax. Your actual tax depends on your income and deductions.
4. Turn counts into chances
$1M+ chance is the number of unclaimed prizes of $1 million or more divided by tickets left. A "$1,000,000" prize counts even though its cash option is smaller. A lifetime prize counts only if its cash option is at least $1 million, so "$1,000 a week for life" (about $780,000 cash) doesn't. Expensive tickets naturally have better odds per ticket, so per $100 spent compares fairly: it's your chance of at least one $1M+ prize if you spend $100 on that game.
Win anything is your current chance of any prize, including ones that only return the ticket price. Sold is the estimated share of tickets already sold.
What this can't tell you
- Every Florida scratch-off returns less than it costs on average. Sorting by return finds the least costly ticket, not a profitable one.
- Most of a ticket's return comes from small prizes. The big prizes are so rare that any one person almost never sees them, so your real results will usually be worse than the average return.
- Winning tickets that were sold but never cashed, or thrown away, still count as "unclaimed." That makes estimates slightly off for games near the end of their run.
- Prize data updates about once a day. Claims for big prizes can lag a few days behind the sale.
- Store-level sales aren't public, so there's no way to know whether a particular store's stock has prizes left.
Sources
Prize tiers and game dates come from the Florida Lottery's game data service. Store locations come from its retailer locator. Top-prize claims, the selling store, and cash payouts come from each game's "Top-Prize Winners with Retailer Information" report. This project isn't affiliated with the Florida Lottery.