Mega Millions: Matrix, Multiplier, and Odds

Last updated: November 12, 2026

Entertainment only. Lotto Gen does not sell tickets and is not affiliated with Mega Millions or any state lottery. Rules below are the matrix in force after the April 2025 game change, checked against participating-lottery rules with an effective date of April 5, 2025, and against the consortium’s March 25, 2025 announcement. Lotteries can amend a promotion. Confirm the chart where a ticket would be sold. Nothing on this page guarantees a win.

Mega Millions is five different white balls from 1 through 70, plus one gold Mega Ball from 1 through 24. A play costs $5. That price includes a multiplier printed on the ticket. The multiplier is 2×, 3×, 4×, 5×, or 10×, chosen at random for that play, and it scales every prize except the jackpot. The old $1 Megaplier add-on, and the Just the Jackpot option some states sold, were retired with this version of the game. This page shows the combination count for each prize tier and how the multiplier sits on top of it. It does not quote a live jackpot. Advertised jackpots move every drawing; the matrix does not, until the game changes again.

What changed in April 2025

The white-ball pool was already 1 through 70. The Mega Ball pool went from 1 through 25 to 1 through 24. The consortium’s announcement set the first drawing under the new prize structure for Tuesday, April 8, 2025, at 11 p.m. Eastern, after the last drawing of the previous game on Friday, April 4, 2025. Participating-lottery rule texts carry an effective date of April 5, 2025. Both dates describe one change, not two different matrices.

Removing one Mega Ball moved the jackpot odds from 1 in 302,575,350 to 1 in 290,472,336. The white-ball count did not change. The price went from $2 to $5 because the multiplier is now included and non-jackpot prizes were raised. After a win, the starting jackpot resets to a $50 million annuity, which the rules call the only guaranteed jackpot. The prize actually paid is pari-mutuel, split among winners, and may be an annuity or a smaller cash amount. Some situations require a lump sum only. The billboard figure is not cash in hand.

The Mega Ball may match the face value of a white ball. The official rules say so, because the two pools are separate. Matching “17 and 17” is not an error and it is not an extra prize by itself. You still have to match the numbers the drawing produced in each pool.

The combination count

Order of the white balls does not matter, so the white-ball sets are

C(70, 5) = (70 × 69 × 68 × 67 × 66) / 120 = 12,103,014.

Each set pairs with one of 24 Mega Balls:

12,103,014 × 24 = 290,472,336.

One of those plays is the jackpot. The published jackpot odds are 1 in 290,472,336, exactly, because 12,103,014 × 24 lands on that integer with nothing left over. The homepage’s “1 in 290.5 million” is the same count, rounded for the line under the balls.

For a lower tier, fix the five winning white balls. Matching exactly w of them means w of your numbers are among those five and the rest come from the 65 white balls that were not drawn. Then the Mega Ball matches (1 way) or misses (23 ways):

ways = C(5, w) × C(65, 5 − w) × (1 if the Mega Ball matches, else 23)

odds = 290,472,336 / ways.

Five white balls and a missed Mega Ball is the cleanest check. There is C(5, 5) × C(65, 0) = 1 white-ball way, times 23 Mega Ball misses, which is 23. Then 290,472,336 / 23 = 12,629,232 exactly. The rules list that tier as 1 in 12,629,232, with a base prize of $1,000,000 before the multiplier. The arithmetic and the rule book agree.

Prize tiers

The rules list nine prize levels. The base prize is a reference amount. On a real ticket the multiplier has already been printed, and the amount paid on a non-jackpot win is the base times that multiplier. You do not receive the bare base. The smallest multiplier is 2×, so the smallest prize on a winning play is $10, which is 2× the $5 Mega Ball-only base. That is also why the consortium could say every winning ticket returns at least twice the $5 price. A miss still returns nothing. “Every winning ticket” is not “every ticket.”

The unrounded odds from the same division, as printed in the April 5, 2025 rules, are 1 in 893,761.0338, 1 in 38,859.1754, 1 in 13,965.0162, 1 in 607.1746, 1 in 665.0008, 1 in 85.8066, and 1 in 35.1666. Two white balls without the Mega Ball, and one or zero white balls without it, pay nothing.

Only the highest tier on a single play is paid. Matching the Mega Ball and three white balls is the fifth prize, not the fifth prize plus a Mega Ball-only prize. Add the nine winning rows and the chance of any prize is 1 in 23.0737, which rounds to the published 1 in 23.07. Before the Mega Ball pool shrank, the any-prize figure was about 1 in 24. The shorter number is the extra Mega Ball hit, not a new way to win the jackpot.

Two cautions from the rules, so the table is not read as a personal guarantee. If the prize pool cannot fund every second-tier winner, that $1 million base can be paid pari-mutuel instead, and it is not supposed to fall below the third-tier prize. During a promotion the multiplier schedule itself can be modified. A state lottery’s claim window, anonymity rules, and taxes are that state’s, not this page’s.

The built-in multiplier

Each play gets one multiplier, chosen when the ticket is issued, not during the drawing. Five plays on one ticket get five multipliers, which may repeat. The rules print both the frequency and the odds:

Those frequencies sum to 32. The average is (2×15 + 3×10 + 4×4 + 5×2 + 10×1) / 32 = 96 / 32 = 3 exactly, which is the “average multiplier 3.0000×” line in the rules. Most tickets show 2× or 3×. A 10× line is the rare one, about one play in 32, and it still does nothing if the play misses every prize row. The multiplier is independent of which numbers you hold. Picking it, or hoping the terminal prints 10, does not change the chance that the white balls match.

The Lotto Gen Mega Millions button draws five numbers from 1 through 70 and one Mega Ball from 1 through 24. It does not assign a multiplier, because a multiplier is a feature of a paid ticket, not of a number set. If you buy a ticket, the multiplier on that ticket is the one the terminal printed for that play.

Nights, quick picks, and the generator

Drawings are Tuesday and Friday at about 11:00 p.m. Eastern. Sales cutoffs are earlier and differ by state; examples in public lottery notes range from well before 11 p.m. to shortly before the draw. The homepage label shows the drawing time in Eastern Time, not your retailer’s cutoff. Use the lottery’s clock if you are buying.

A quick pick on a Mega Millions slip is the terminal choosing some or all of the six numbers. It has the same chance as a set you marked: one combination in 290,472,336. It does not include a better multiplier. Players who favor dates still split jackpots more often when a low-number set hits, for the reason covered in how lottery odds work. The button on this site is a browser shuffle of the current matrix, not a ticket and not an official quick pick. How the generator works goes through the functions. Powerball’s parallel count is in the Powerball guide.

A $5 play is entertainment with a published chance of losing. Weighting the non-jackpot prizes by the average 3× multiplier comes to a little over a dollar of expected set-prize value before the jackpot, taxes, or splits. The jackpot term needs a cash amount on the order of a billion dollars before that illustration even reaches $5, and sharing plus taxes pull it down. The arithmetic is in how lottery odds work. It is not a buy signal. If the money is no longer optional, use responsible play, including 1-800-GAMBLER.

The game’s own how-to-play pages start at megamillions.com. Sentences here are an explanation of the public rules, not those rules.