Thunderball odds: every prize level and the maths behind it
Thunderball is the small, steady member of the National Lottery family: a £1 line, four draws a week and nine fixed prizes, from £3 up to £500,000. Here is the chance of each one, worked out from the draw itself and set against the figures the operator prints in its Game Procedures.
Thunderball odds for every prize
Each line has five main numbers from 1 to 39 and one Thunderball from 1 to 14. Draws take place on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. The Thunderball comes from its own set of 14 balls, so it can carry the same number as a main ball, and it only ever counts against your Thunderball. That gives exactly 8,060,598 different lines, and every prize below is a count of how many of those lines win it.
| Match | Prize | Winning lines | Exact odds, 1 in | Published, 1 in |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Match 5 + Thunderball | £500,000 | 1 | 8,060,598 | 8,060,598 (exact) |
| Match 5 | £5,000 | 13 | 620,046 | 620,046 (exact) |
| Match 4 + Thunderball | £250 | 170 | 47,415.28 | 47,416 (rounded up) |
| Match 4 | £100 | 2,210 | 3,647.33 | 3,648 (rounded up) |
| Match 3 + Thunderball | £20 | 5,610 | 1,436.83 | 1,437 (rounded up) |
| Match 3 | £10 | 72,930 | 110.53 | 111 (rounded up) |
| Match 2 + Thunderball | £10 | 59,840 | 134.70 | 135 (rounded up) |
| Match 1 + Thunderball | £5 | 231,880 | 34.76 | 35 (rounded up) |
| Match 0 + Thunderball | £3 | 278,256 | 28.97 | 29 (rounded up) |
| Any prize | £3 to £500,000 | 650,910 | 12.38 | 13 (rounded up) |
The published odds agree with the exact ones in every tier. Where the exact figure is not a whole number, the operator has always rounded it up, so the printed odds are never more generous than the truth. The any-prize figure is the one to read carefully: the exact chance is 1 in 12.38, which ordinary rounding would make 1 in 12, but it is printed as 1 in 13.
How the Thunderball odds are calculated
The sum has two independent parts. The main draw picks 5 balls from 39, and there are C(39, 5) = 575,757 ways it can fall. The Thunderball machine then picks one ball from 14. Multiply the two and you get the 8,060,598 possible lines, one of which matches everything.
For a lower tier, count the ways your line can hit exactly the right number of main balls. Take Match 4 + Thunderball. Your four hits must come from the five numbers drawn, which can happen in C(5, 4) = 5 ways, and your fifth number must be one of the 34 that were not drawn, which gives 34 ways. That is 170 winning combinations of main numbers, and only 1 of the 14 Thunderballs is yours.
The same pattern gives every row of the table: C(5, k) × C(34, 5 − k) ways to match k main numbers, divided by 575,757, then multiplied by 1/14 with the Thunderball or 13/14 without it. The lottery odds calculator runs exactly this sum for any draw and any number of lines, and our page on how we calculate the odds explains the method in more depth.
Two results in the table look odd until you do the counting. Matching none of the main numbers with the Thunderball (1 in 28.97) is more likely than matching one of them with it (1 in 34.76), because there are 278,256 ways to miss all five and only 231,880 ways to hit exactly one. And Match 3 without the Thunderball (1 in 110.53) comes up more often than Match 2 with it (1 in 134.70), because needing the Thunderball, a 1 in 14 shot, removes more winning lines than dropping from three main numbers to two adds. Matching two main numbers alone happens once in 10.36 lines and pays nothing.
What the Thunderball odds mean in practice
A chance of 1 in 8,060,598 is hard to picture, so put it on a calendar. Suppose you bought one line for every draw, 4 a week, which is 208 lines and £208 a year. You would expect to wait about 38,753 years, on average, for the top prize. Keep that up for fifty years and the chance of landing it at least once is 0.13%, a little better than 1 in 776.
The smaller prizes are a different story. With the any-prize chance of 1 in 12.38, those 208 lines would produce about 17 wins in a typical year, almost all of them £3, £5 and £10. On average the year's £208 of lines would bring back about £110 in prizes, which is where the expected return in the next section comes from.
Next to the other National Lottery draws, the top prize here is modest but far more reachable. A Lotto jackpot is 1 in 22,528,738 per £2 line, roughly 5.6 times less likely per pound spent than the Thunderball top prize. The Lotto odds page explains the two-round draw behind that figure.
Fixed prizes and the average return
Because every Thunderball prize is a fixed amount, you can work out exactly what an average line returns. Multiply each prize by its chance and add them up: the result is 52.88p for every £1 line. The game procedures give a prize payout of 52.882%, so the figures agree to the penny. There is no jackpot to roll over, and the procedures only allow prizes to be scaled back (capped) if the prize bill for one draw would pass 4 times its entries, so what you see in the table is what an ordinary draw pays.
For comparison, across all National Lottery sales in April 2024 to March 2025, 55p of every pound went to prizes, 23p to good causes and 12p to Lottery Duty. Thunderball returns slightly less than that average. Either way, it is far below a casino table: even an American roulette wheel, one of the dearer tables, pays back 94.74p in the pound, as our house edge guide shows.
Thunderball against the other UK draws
The table below uses each game's published figures. The last column puts them on a common footing: the chance of the top prize for each pound spent, found by multiplying the jackpot odds by the price of a line.
| Draw | Line | Draws a week | Top prize, 1 in | Any prize, 1 in | Top prize per £1, 1 in |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lotto | £2 | 2 | 22,528,738 | 4.9 | 45.1m |
| EuroMillions | £2.50 | 2 | 139,838,160 | 13 | 349.6m |
| Thunderball | £1 | 4 | 8,060,598 | 13 | 8.1m |
| Set For Life | £1.50 | 2 | 15,339,390 | 12.4 | 23.0m |
Thunderball has the best top-prize odds per pound of the four. Its published any-prize figure of 1 in 13 ties with EuroMillions, although the exact chance, 1 in 12.38, is a shade better than the 1 in 12.41 of Set For Life. What it lacks is size: its £500,000 is a fixed prize, while the Lotto and EuroMillions jackpots grow with sales and rollovers. Set For Life pays its top prize as a monthly income instead. The full side-by-side view, with every draw, is on our UK lottery odds page.
A £1 line is cheap, and four draws a week can make it feel cheaper than it is. If buying lines has started to feel less like fun and more like a habit, our responsible gambling page lists free, confidential help.
More lottery odds
Thunderball odds: questions people ask
What are the odds of winning the Thunderball top prize?
The top prize of £500,000 needs all five main numbers and the Thunderball. There are 8,060,598 different lines, so the chance for one £1 line is exactly 1 in 8,060,598, the figure the National Lottery publishes.
What are the odds of winning anything on Thunderball?
Adding up all nine prize tiers gives 1 in 12.38 for a single line. The published figure is 1 in 13, because the operator rounds it up to a whole number; ordinary rounding would give 1 in 12.
Do I win anything for matching just the Thunderball?
Yes. Match 0 + Thunderball pays £3, and at 1 in 28.97 it is the most likely prize in the game. Matching only main numbers pays nothing until you reach three of them.
Why is Match 0 + Thunderball more likely than Match 1 + Thunderball?
Because most of the 39 main numbers are not drawn. There are 278,256 ways to choose five numbers that all miss, and only 231,880 ways to hit exactly one, so missing all five is the more common result.
Does Thunderball have a rollover jackpot?
No. Every Thunderball prize is a fixed amount, including the £500,000 top prize, so nothing rolls over from one draw to the next and the odds and prizes are the same in every draw.
Can the fixed Thunderball prizes ever be reduced?
Only in an unusual draw. The game procedures allow prizes to be capped if the total prize bill for a draw would exceed 4 times the draw's total entries. In an ordinary draw every winner gets the amount in the prize table.
How much of the ticket price does Thunderball pay back?
Multiplying each prize by its chance gives 52.88p per £1 line, which matches the prize payout of 52.882% in the game procedures. The rest pays for good causes, duty, retailers and running costs.
Does buying more lines improve my Thunderball odds?
Each different line adds one more chance in 8,060,598, so ten lines give 10 in 8,060,598. The chance per pound spent does not change, and the average return stays at about 53p in the pound however many lines you buy.
Is Thunderball easier to win than Lotto?
For the top prize, yes. One Thunderball line has a 1 in 8,060,598 chance of £500,000, while one Lotto line has a 1 in 22,528,738 chance of the jackpot. The Lotto jackpot is usually much larger, so the two are different bargains.