Free Calculators for Competition Players
Know what an entry is really worth before you buy the ticket — your true odds, the expected return per £1, and what the habit costs over a year.
Competition Odds Calculator
Work out your real chance of winning a UK prize competition from the ticket cap and how many entries you hold.
Reach for it when: You're looking at a draw and want the honest number behind “1 in a great chance” — before you decide how many tickets to buy.
Open calculatorMulti-Competition Odds Calculator
Entering several competitions at once? See your combined chance of winning at least one prize.
Reach for it when: You've got a shortlist and a fixed budget, and want to know whether spreading it across four draws beats stacking one.
Open calculatorInstant Win Odds Calculator
See your chance of hitting at least one instant win prize from the prize count, ticket cap and your entries.
Reach for it when: A competition's main draw is long odds but it's seeded with instant wins, and you want to know your realistic chance of hitting one.
Open calculatorCompetition Expected Value Calculator
See whether a competition entry is mathematically good value by comparing what you pay with what you can expect back.
Reach for it when: Two draws look similar and you need a tiebreaker — this one turns price, prize and ticket cap into pence returned per pound.
Open calculatorCompetition Spending Calculator
Turn a weekly ticket habit into a clear monthly and yearly figure so you always know what competitions really cost you.
Reach for it when: You suspect a few pounds a week has quietly become a real line in your budget, and you want the annual figure in front of you.
Open calculatorWorking out whether a draw is worth entering
Operators advertise the prize. These five calculators answer the questions the prize photo doesn't — and they answer them in a sensible order.
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1
Competition Odds Calculator
Start with the chance of winning. A ticket cap turns into a plain "1 in N" and a percentage, and — because most operators draw from tickets actually sold — you can rerun it with the live sold count from a listing to see what the odds really are today.
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2
Competition Expected Value Calculator
Odds alone can't tell you whether £2.50 is a fair price for them. Expected value multiplies your chance by the prize value to give a return per £1 spent, which is the only figure that lets you rank two very different draws against each other.
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3
Instant Win Odds Calculator
Instant wins are a separate bet running inside the same competition, with their own prize pool and much shorter odds. Work them out separately rather than letting "500 prizes!" flatter the headline draw.
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4
Multi-Competition Odds Calculator
Once you are entering more than one draw, your chance of winning something is not the sum of the individual chances. This combines them properly, which matters when you are deciding whether to spread a budget or concentrate it.
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5
Competition Spending Calculator
Finally, the number nobody advertises: what a weekly ticket habit costs over a month and a year. Ten tickets a week at £1.50 is £780 a year — worth seeing written down before you set a budget.
What these calculators assume
- They work from the numbers you type in, not from a live listing. Copy the ticket cap, price and sold count off the competition page — on our listings the tickets sold figure is shown on the draw itself.
- Odds are calculated against the ticket total you enter. Put in the cap and you get the worst-case odds; put in tickets sold so far and you get the odds if the draw were called now. Most UK operators draw from sold tickets, so reality usually sits between the two.
- Prize value is whatever you enter. Where an operator publishes a cash alternative, use that — headline "worth £X" figures are retail prices and normally overstate what the prize is worth to you.
- They cover the paid entry route only. Every legitimate UK prize competition must offer a free entry route, which changes the arithmetic entirely and is always worth reading up on.
We track thousands of live UK competitions with prices, ticket caps and end dates — so you can compare the odds before you enter.