Which scratch ticket has the best odds in Ontario? The payout data

OLG publishes two numbers for every scratch ticket it sells. One is the overall odds: how often a ticket pays any prize at all. The other is the prize payout: how much of every dollar spent on that game comes back to players. Across seven recent Ontario games the odds run from 1 in 3.14 to 1 in 4.49, and the payout from 64.97% to 72.64%. So the answer to which scratch ticket has the best odds in Ontario depends on which of the two you mean, and neither one puts you ahead.

Which scratch ticket has the best odds in Ontario?

Of the seven games below, ACES WILD at $20 pays a prize most often, at 1 in 3.14. 30X at $30 gives back the most per dollar, at 72.64%. The two $3 tickets give back the least. Every game keeps somewhere between 27 and 35 cents of each dollar that goes through it.

Every figure there is OLG’s own, taken from the player’s guide fact sheet published for each game. Games rotate off the rack every year or so, so look up whatever is actually in front of you rather than trusting a list.

The two numbers OLG publishes, and where to find them

Each INSTANT game has a fact sheet on olg.ca carrying four figures: the overall odds of winning, the total number of prizes, the number of tickets received, and the prize payout.

The odds are arithmetic and nothing else. OLG’s PlaySmart site (opens in a new tab) walks through the example: a game with 21,155,400 tickets printed and 6,141,887 prizes has odds of 1 in 3.44. That’s the whole calculation. The store, the day and the ticket you reach for don’t enter into it.

The prize payout is the more useful of the two. OLG defines it as a theoretical percentage based on the dollar value of all the cash prizes in a game, assuming every ticket sells and every prize gets claimed. Free-play prizes are left out of it. So PLINKO’s 66.95% (opens in a new tab) means that for every $100 players put into that game, about $67 comes back out as prizes and about $33 stays with OLG. Loto-Québec publishes the same figure under the name payoff rate, and its gratteux return 62% to 67%.

A better percentage on a $30 ticket still costs you more

Payout climbs with price. The two $3 games above sit at 64.97% and 65.00%, the $5 games at about 67%, and 30X at $30 (opens in a new tab) reaches 72.64%. That reads like an argument for the expensive ticket until you work it out in dollars.

At 64.97%, a $3 ticket costs you about $1.05 on average. At 72.64%, a $30 ticket costs you about $8.21. The better rate is being applied to ten times the money, so you lose nearly eight times as much per ticket. A percentage is the wrong unit here. You pay in dollars.

How much of a win is just your own money back?

A good chunk of it. PLINKO is a $5 ticket with 1,378,890 prizes spread through 5,234,460 tickets, which is exactly where its 1 in 3.80 comes from. Of those prizes, 471,103 are a flat $5.

So 34% of the winning tickets in that game hand you back exactly what you paid. Counted against all the tickets rather than all the prizes, one ticket in eleven is a break-even. The 1 in 3.80 headline is accurate, and about a third of what it promises is your own $5 handed back.

Are the top prizes still there?

Not always, and Ontario’s Auditor General said so. The 2022 value-for-money audit of OLG (opens in a new tab) found that the corporation “is not ensuring that Ontarians are aware of whether any top instant scratch ticket prizes are still available at the time of purchase of open packets of scratch tickets.” A pack holds about 10 tickets. Between April 2018 and June 2022, roughly 88% of all instant scratch tickets printed were sold, for net sales of about $6.4 billion.

OLG does run a recall. Once the last top prize on a game goes, it emails retailers, puts a notice on the lottery terminal for three days running, pulls the advertising, and has the manufacturer collect what’s left in stores. Reconciling the returned tickets can take up to six months. The auditor’s finding was about the gap in the middle: “There is nothing stopping retailers from continuing to sell open packets of scratch tickets after OLG has sent the notifications.”

OLG’s own fact sheets carry the warning in a single line: “At the time of purchase, some of the prizes offered may have already been claimed.”

The fix the auditor asked for is a barcode on every ticket that retailers scan, switched off once the top prizes are gone. OLG accepted it, and the 2024 follow-up (opens in a new tab) lists it as in progress with a target of June 2027. The board approved funding for the new lottery system in May 2024 and the request for proposal went out at the end of that month. Until it arrives, the recall is still the only mechanism.

How to check before you hand over the $5

OLG posts the number of prizes in each INSTANT game and how many are still unclaimed, on its INSTANT unclaimed prizes page (opens in a new tab). It’s generally refreshed daily for Ontario-only games and weekly for the national ones. A retailer can also print the list from the lottery terminal if you ask.

The recall reaches the retailer, not the pack already open on the counter. Until the barcode system arrives, checking is on you.

Where the Friday $5 could be going instead

A $5 ticket every Friday adds up to $260 over a year, and at a 67% payout about $86 of it stays with OLG. Buying one is a fine way to spend five dollars. It’s entertainment, and it’s priced like entertainment. Ontario as a whole buys $4.15 billion of lottery tickets a year, about $311 for every adult in the province.

Lodavo is a Canadian app that gives you free tickets in a weekly cash draw based on what’s sitting in your own savings or chequing account. Every $25 in your account is a ticket, the top prize is $10,000, and a guaranteed prize of at least $100 goes to a user every week. It’s free, and your savings stay in your own bank. If what you like about a scratch ticket is having something to find out on the weekend, this is the version where you keep the $5.

What the numbers add up to

ACES WILD pays a prize most often, at 1 in 3.14. 30X gives back the most per dollar, at 72.64%. Both of those sit on tickets costing $20 or $30, and both take more dollars off you per ticket than either $3 game does. Every game is built to keep a share, and OLG publishes how big that share is for every one of them.

Want a draw to look forward to without paying for a ticket? Download Lodavo free on the Apple App Store (opens in a new tab) or Google Play Store (opens in a new tab) and earn your first tickets just by saving this week.

Terms and conditions apply. No purchase necessary (alternate method of entry available). Skill-testing question required. Open to legal residents of Canada who are the age of majority. Odds depend on the number of eligible entries received. Full rules and odds at our contest rules.