Premium Bonds
Premium Bonds odds: your chance of a prize, from one draw to a year
Type the value of your Bonds. The tool turns the published odds into the chance of at least one prize in a month, in three months and in a year, and the number of prizes to expect.
Premium Bonds: your chance of a prize, month by month
Chance of at least one prize each month
37.9 %
| In 3 months | 76.0 % |
| In 12 months | 99.7 % |
| Prizes expected in a year | 5.7 |
| Months for an even chance | 2 |
Odds of 21,000 to 1 per £1 Bond, October 2026 draw. Variable, never guaranteed.
NS&I states the odds of Premium Bonds as 21,000 to 1 for each £1 Bond in each monthly draw, down from 23,000 to 1 before the latest change (NS&I, Premium Bonds). Those odds describe one Bond, so the chance for a holding depends on how many Bonds it contains. With £1,000 the chance of at least one prize in a given month is about 4.7 %, and over twelve draws it reaches 44 %. With £10,000 it is 38 % a month and close to certain over a year, with around 6 prizes expected. The maximum holding of £50,000 wins something in about 91 % of months. Odds say nothing about size: in the October 2026 draw, 99 % of the 6,546,849 prizes were worth £100 or less. Nothing here is a promise of any prize.
Sums checked by Radif Partners · Editorial policy · How the sums are done
The prize table behind the odds
Every month NS&I counts the Bonds eligible for the draw and creates one prize for every 21,000 of them. For October 2026 that gave 6,546,849 prizes with a total value of £498,378,775 (NS&I, monthly prize allocation). Multiplying the number of prizes by the odds gives about 138 billion Bonds in the draw, which lets each prize value be turned into a chance per Bond.
| Prize | Number in the draw | Chance per £1 Bond | Share of the prize fund |
|---|---|---|---|
| £1,000,000 | 2 | 1 in 68,741,914,500 | 0.4 % |
| £100,000 | 96 | 1 in 1,432,123,219 | 1.9 % |
| £50,000 | 191 | 1 in 719,810,623 | 1.9 % |
| £25,000 | 382 | 1 in 359,905,312 | 1.9 % |
| £10,000 | 957 | 1 in 143,661,263 | 1.9 % |
| £5,000 | 1,914 | 1 in 71,830,632 | 1.9 % |
| £1,000 | 19,934 | 1 in 6,896,951 | 4.0 % |
| £500 | 59,802 | 1 in 2,298,984 | 6.0 % |
| £100 | 2,371,145 | 1 in 57,982 | 47.6 % |
| £50 | 2,371,145 | 1 in 57,982 | 23.8 % |
| £25 | 1,721,281 | 1 in 79,873 | 8.6 % |
The bottom three rows hold almost all the prizes. The top six values together count only 3,542 prizes, so a single Bond's chance of winning £5,000 or more in a month is about 1 in 38,815,310. The £1,000,000 prize comes up twice a month across the whole draw, which puts it at odds that no holding of £50,000 can bring close.
From one Bond to a holding
Because each Bond is drawn independently, the chance of no prize at all is the chance of one Bond missing, raised to the number of Bonds. The tool uses that formula and then repeats it over the months. The table shows what it gives for five holdings, including the number of draws after which a first prize becomes more likely than not.
| Holding | In one month | Within 6 months | Within 12 months | Prizes expected a year | Months for an even chance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £100 | 0.5 % | 2.8 % | 5.6 % | 0 | 146 |
| £1,000 | 4.7 % | 24.9 % | 43.5 % | 1 | 15 |
| £5,000 | 21.2 % | 76.0 % | 94.3 % | 3 | 3 |
| £20,000 | 61.4 % | 99.7 % | 100.0 % | 11 | 1 |
| £50,000 | 90.8 % | 100.0 % | 100.0 % | 29 | 1 |
The minimum purchase of £25 gives a very small chance in any month. At £100 the even-chance point is years away, which is why small holders often see long gaps. Once a holding reaches several thousand pounds, prizes arrive most months, but most of them are £25. Holding more than £50,000 is not allowed.
Why a lucky streak does not change the next draw
Each draw is separate. A holding that won three months running has exactly the same chance next month as one that has won nothing for a year, because the odds per Bond are set afresh for every draw from the number of Bonds and prizes. Long gaps are expected rather than a sign that something is wrong: for £1,000, about 56 % of years pass with no prize at all, even though nothing about the Bonds has changed. The chance only moves when the holding grows or shrinks, or when NS&I changes the odds.
Odds are not a return
Knowing how often a holding wins says little about how much it earns. A holder of £20,000 expects about 11 prizes a year, yet the total can vary widely from one year to the next. The Premium Bonds calculator shows that spread in pounds, and the prize fund rate page explains how the 4.35 % figure relates to these odds. Both odds and rate are variable; the current figures are those on NS&I's Premium Bonds page.