Top prize
$1 million per year for life · $18M cash option
3 winners
- Winning drawings
- 3
- Since then
- 57 days since last winner
An independent statistics project
Tracking every lifetime-prize winner since the game's launch.
Not affiliated with Powerball, the Multi-State Lottery Association, or any state lottery. Figures are compiled from Powerball's published results. Official Millionaire for Life results always take precedence.
Total winning tickets since launch, through each drawing.
Counted from the most recent verified winning drawing to today. Each drawing's odds are independent: a long gap does not make a winner more likely next time.
57
calendar days since the Sep 8, 2026 drawing
31
calendar days since the Oct 4, 2026 drawing
How many lifetime-prize winners the official odds predict for the estimated number of plays so far, compared to how many actually happened.
| Prize | Official odds | Actual | Expected | Difference | Actual ÷ expected | P(this many or fewer) | P(this many or more) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Top prize | 1 in 22,910,580 | 3 | 4.4 | −1.4 | 0.68× | 0.362 | 0.813 |
| Second prize | 1 in 5,727,645 | 8 | 17.5 | −9.5 | 0.46× | 0.009 | > 0.99 |
Estimated plays since launch
100.5 million
Poisson 95% interval 100.4 million – 100.5 million (understates the real uncertainty; see method) · about 392,517 per drawing · roughly $502.4 million in sales at $5 per play
Estimates, not official sales data. Powerball doesn't publish Millionaire for Life sales. These figures are reconstructed from winner counts.
For a drawing with N plays, the number of tickets that hit a prize tier with probability p follows a binomial distribution, which for these tiny probabilities is very well approximated by a Poisson distribution with mean N·p.
Plays. Each drawing's play count is estimated from its seven fixed-prize tiers combined: N = (total winners across those tiers) ÷ (sum of their probabilities). That's the maximum-likelihood estimate for pooled Poisson counts. It is a weighted average of the per-tier estimates, not their sum, and the common tiers dominate because their counts are the most precise. The two lifetime tiers are left out so they aren't used to predict themselves.
Expected winners. Estimated plays × the official probability for that prize. The probabilities in the last two columns treat the actual count as a draw from a Poisson distribution with that expected mean.
Caveats. Players don't choose numbers uniformly (birthdays, patterns, "lucky" numbers), so a single night's winner counts swing more than a pure random model predicts, depending on which numbers came up. That's visible below: the per-tier estimates disagree by more than their statistical intervals. Uneven number choice doesn't change how many winners to expect on average (every drawing is uniformly random), but it does make the actual count more variable than the Poisson model assumes. So the probabilities above, and the plays interval, overstate how surprising a result is and how precise the estimate is. Read them as rough guides. The top prize is also pari-mutuel per the official rules. Odds are the official published odds for a $5 play.
| Combination | Odds | Winners | Implied plays | 95% interval | ÷ pooled estimate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 + Millionaire Ball (not pooled) | 1 in 22,910,580.00 | 3 | 68.7 million | 0 – 146.5 million | 0.684 |
| 5 white balls (not pooled) | 1 in 5,727,645.00 | 8 | 45.8 million | 14.1 million – 77.6 million | 0.456 |
| 4 + Millionaire Ball | 1 in 86,455.02 | 1,125 | 97.3 million | 91.6 million – 102.9 million | 0.968 |
| 4 white balls | 1 in 21,613.75 | 4,553 | 98.4 million | 95.5 million – 101.3 million | 0.979 |
| 3 + Millionaire Ball | 1 in 1,662.60 | 59,975 | 99.7 million | 98.9 million – 100.5 million | 0.992 |
| 3 white balls | 1 in 415.65 | 237,738 | 98.8 million | 98.4 million – 99.2 million | 0.983 |
| 2 + Millionaire Ball | 1 in 97.80 | 1,025,442 | 100.3 million | 100.1 million – 100.5 million | 0.998 |
| 2 white balls | 1 in 24.45 | 4,089,063 | 100.0 million | 99.9 million – 100.1 million | 0.995 |
| 1 + Millionaire Ball | 1 in 15.65 | 6,448,080 | 100.9 million | 100.8 million – 101.0 million | 1.004 |
Compare your numbers against any drawing since launch. Everything runs in your browser, and nothing you enter is sent anywhere.
Unofficial number checker. This tool compares numbers entered by the user against published historical winning numbers. It does not validate physical lottery tickets or establish eligibility for a prize. Always verify tickets through the official state lottery.
Newest first. Each date links to its official Powerball result page. Rows with a lifetime-prize winner are highlighted.
Raw data: historical-results.json