How scratch-off odds really work, why the number printed on the back stops being true, and how ScratchSmart ranks every active game across 26 states.
ScratchSmart is an analytics tool for scratch-off lottery tickets. Every morning we pull the official prize data published by state lotteries and recompute which active games still have the best value — based on the prizes that are actually still unclaimed, not the odds printed at launch. It's how you avoid buying into a game that has already given away its best prizes.
Yes — and this is the whole point. The odds printed on the back of a ticket are fixed at launch and never change. But the prizes behind them get claimed. Once a game's last $1,000,000 ticket is gone, you can still buy that game, at the same price, printed with the same odds — and your real chance of winning that prize is now zero. The lottery doesn't pull the game. Nothing on the ticket tells you. ScratchSmart tracks what's actually left, every day, so you can see the difference between a game's advertised odds and its current value.
There is no single best scratch-off that stays best — it changes as prizes are claimed, and the answer is different in every state. ScratchSmart recomputes it every morning from official state lottery prize data: every active game is ranked by ScratchScore™, a 0–100 rating built from the prizes still unclaimed measured against the tickets still out there. To see today's answer for where you play, open the Live Board and choose your state — games are listed best-first, and you can filter by ticket price so you are comparing $5 games with $5 games rather than against $30 ones. ScratchSmart currently covers 26 states: Arizona, California, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia. No tool can improve your odds on a ticket you buy; what this does is show you which games still have the most value left in them today.
It changes daily, and it's different in every state — which is exactly why we recompute it every morning rather than publishing a static list. Open the Live Board, pick your state, and the games are ranked best-first by ScratchScore™. You can filter by ticket price to compare $1 games against other $1 games, which is the only fair comparison.
Every game on ScratchSmart shows top prizes remaining, and the full prize-tier table — how many of each prize were printed and how many are still unclaimed. Games whose top prize is already gone are tagged Dead. It's the first thing worth checking, and the state lottery's own site rarely puts it in front of you.
No. We don't sell tickets and we can't change the odds. Scratch-offs are games of chance and the lottery always keeps an edge — no scratch game pays back 100%. What we do is help you play the games near the top of the value range instead of the bottom. Please play responsibly.
No. ScratchSmart is an independent analytics tool. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by any state lottery. All of our numbers are computed from the prize data each lottery publishes publicly — and every game links back to its official page so you can verify it yourself.
We're live in 26 states: Arizona, California, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia. We add a state only once we can verify complete, official prize data for it — per game, that means the total tickets printed and, for every prize tier, both how many were printed and how many are still unclaimed. Without all of that, the math is a guess, and we'd rather show nothing than a confident-looking number we can't stand behind. States we're still preparing show as "coming soon."
Two reasons. A few states don't sell scratch-off tickets at all — some have no lottery, others run draw games only — so there is nothing there to rank. Everywhere else it comes down to data. Our numbers are only as good as what the lottery publishes: for every game we need the full print run and, for every prize tier, how many were printed and how many are still unclaimed, refreshed daily. Some states don't publish all of that, or update it too rarely for the remaining-value math to mean anything. We add a state the day we can stand behind its numbers and leave it out until then, rather than show you a confident-looking figure built on gaps. We're live in 26 states today — see which states are supported above.
Every morning. We refresh each state's official prize data daily and recompute every metric, so the board reflects the latest remaining-prize counts. The "updated" timestamp is shown at the bottom of every page.
Yes — and the free tier is a real product, not a teaser. Anyone can browse the Live Board with no account at all. A free account adds your state's full board: every active game with its Current Payout %, estimated tickets remaining, the complete prize table, the per-game payout trend, and a 5-game watchlist with in-app alerts. Pro adds ScratchScore™ on every game, Hidden Gem and Hot Streak tags, week-over-week ranking movement, the Hidden Gems board, sorting and filtering by any metric, and email alerts. New accounts get a 3-day free Pro trial with no card required.
ScratchScore™ is our proprietary 0–100 rating that ranks every active game by its real, current value. The higher the score, the better the game looks right now. It combines the return still left per dollar, the chance a ticket beats its own price, how concentrated the remaining big prizes are, and how far through its print run the game is. It's measured on a fixed scale, so a 62 means the same thing in Rhode Island as it does in Texas.
Advertised Payout is the share of every dollar a game was designed to pay back at launch — set by the lottery's published odds, before anyone bought a ticket. Current Payout is what a dollar actually pays back today, based on the prizes still unclaimed. Both are shown as a percentage — 73% means about 73¢ comes back per $1 over the long run. No scratch game pays back 100%; that gap is the house edge. As a game's best prizes get claimed, its Current Payout drifts below what it advertised, and that gap is exactly what ScratchSmart surfaces so you don't overpay for a drained game.
It happens when the remaining prizes are richer than the launch average — for example, a big top prize still unclaimed while many small winners have already been sold. That's a genuinely favourable window, and it's what we tag as a Hidden Gem. It can also read high on games that are nearly sold out, where a handful of remaining prizes swing the math, so we flag late-life games and tell you to treat those numbers with caution.
We derive it. State lotteries publish how many prizes remain, not how many tickets have sold, so ScratchSmart works backwards: as the remaining prize counts fall day over day, that implies how much of the print run has been bought. It is an estimate and we label it as one — accurate enough to compare games against each other, not an exact inventory count. Games too freshly launched for the maths to settle are tagged Calibrating and we withhold a score rather than publish a number we do not trust yet.
On average, higher-priced tickets are printed with a higher payout percentage — a $20 game usually returns a bigger share of each dollar than a $1 game. But that's an average across the whole print run, not a promise about the game in front of you: an expensive game whose top prizes are already claimed can be far worse value than a cheap one that's barely been touched. Compare games at the same price on the Live Board's price filter, and let the current numbers decide.
They show movement in a game's ranking — like a stock ticker. A green up arrow means the game climbed; red means it slipped. The arrows describe the ranking you're actually looking at: filter to $5 tickets and "up 3" means three places among $5 games. They compare against the last day the board actually changed — if a state's lottery doesn't publish new numbers one day, the arrow says which day it's measuring from rather than pretending a day passed.
Usually yes. A game "ending" means the lottery stopped selling it — it does not void prizes that are still unclaimed. Most states allow claims for a set period after sales end, commonly 90 to 180 days, and each state sets its own deadline. ScratchSmart lists ended games separately for reference and leaves them out of the rankings, because you can no longer buy them. If you are holding a ticket from one, check your state lottery's official claim deadline before you throw it away.
A game whose top prize is gone AND that's well into its run (80%+ sold) — the headline jackpot is unwinnable and you'd be buying the dregs. Both have to be true: a game that lost its top prize early still has most of its prizes to give, so it stays on the board (with a Caution tag if it's getting late). You can still walk into a store and buy a Dead game — the lottery keeps selling it at full price with the original odds printed on the back — Dead is the tag that tells you not to.
A game where the big prizes ($1,000 and up) are being claimed more slowly than the tickets are selling — so an unusually rich share of them is still sitting in the remaining pile. It's the closest thing to a real edge in scratch-offs, and each card shows you the arithmetic behind it rather than asking you to take our word for it. Browse them on the Hidden Gems page (Pro).
A game that has climbed significantly up its state's ScratchScore ranking over the last 7 days — usually because a big prize went unclaimed while tickets kept selling. Hot is about momentum; Hidden Gem is about the standing value. A game can be either, both, or neither. See your state's biggest movers on the Hot Streak page (Pro).
New marks a game that just launched — under 10% of its tickets sold — so too few prizes have been claimed for the remaining-value math to be trustworthy yet. Treat its ScratchScore as provisional; it settles as real sales come in. You can browse every just-launched game on the Fresh Ink page (Pro). Caution means a game is well into its print run (70%+ sold), so the prize pool is drained and the remaining-value estimate gets noisier — not a reason to avoid it (that's what Dead is for), just a nudge to check the numbers before you buy. A game with no tag is the reliable middle.
Not per ticket, no. Each ticket is an independent draw against the same remaining pool — buying ten doesn't make the eleventh more likely to win, and no scratch-off strategy changes the house edge. The only thing you control is which game you buy and how much you spend. That's what ScratchSmart helps with. Set a monthly budget in the app and we'll track your net position against it.
No — that's a myth. Tickets are distributed and sold randomly; there's no day of the week, roll position, or time of day that improves your chances. What genuinely changes over time is which prizes are still unclaimed, and that's a fact you can look up rather than a superstition. Read The Scratch Report for the seven most common scratch-off myths and what the data actually says.
Our Winners Map plots every major scratch-off win each state publishes — mapped to the store that sold the ticket, across 26 states and the last several months. Worth saying plainly: a store that sold a winner is not "lucky." High-volume stores sell more winners because they sell more tickets. It's a genuinely interesting map, not a strategy.
You can, and we link to the official page for every single game so you can verify anything we show. But the lottery publishes raw prize counts, not value: it won't tell you that a game's top prize is gone, that its real payout has fallen well below what it advertised, or how it compares to the other 80 games on the shelf. ScratchSmart does that math every morning, for every active game, and ranks them.
Yes. Tap Compare on any game from the Live Board, the Tickets grid or your Watchlist, pick a second (up to three), and you get one table with the best value in each row highlighted. It's most useful across price points — deciding between one $30 ticket and six $5s is exactly the question a single ranking can't answer, because it turns on top prizes left, how much of the roll is gone, and the odds per ticket rather than one combined score.
Anyone can browse the Live Board and see the top-ranked picks for each state. A free account adds your state's full board — Current Payout %, estimated tickets remaining, the full prize table and payout trend on every game — plus a 5-game watchlist with in-app alerts. ScratchScore™, the Hidden Gem and Hot Streak tags, week-over-week ranking movement, the Hidden Gems board, and email alerts are Pro.
New accounts get a 3-day free Pro trial — no card required. During the trial you have full access to everything Pro. When it ends you drop to the free plan automatically; nothing is charged unless you choose to upgrade. Start one from the Pricing page.
Settings → Danger zone → Cancel subscription, or from the Subscription page. You are never handed off to a third-party billing portal, and there is no email to send. Cancelling stops the renewal — you keep full Pro access through the end of the period you already paid for, and we email you that exact date. Change your mind before then and Renew turns it back on at the same price with no gap. After that you drop to the free plan; nothing is deleted. You can also delete your account entirely from the same place — that permanently removes your data and can't be undone.
Yes. On the login or signup screen, choose "Continue with Google." You can also use a regular email and password.
$4.99 a month, or $39.99 a year — the annual plan works out to about $3.33 a month. Both give you identical features; the only difference is how often you're billed. There is no setup fee, no per-state charge, and no upsell inside the app.
All major credit and debit cards, plus Apple Pay and Google Pay where your device and browser support them — those appear automatically at checkout if your phone or browser has a card in its wallet, so there's nothing to type. Payments are processed by Stripe. We don't accept cash, cheque, gift cards, or lottery winnings.
No — we never see them. Card details go straight to Stripe, a PCI Level 1 certified processor, on a payment form Stripe controls. Nothing about your card ever reaches our servers or our database. What we store is a Stripe customer reference, which plan you're on, and when it renews. Your receipts come from Stripe directly, not from us.
No. The trial doesn't ask for a card, so there is nothing to charge. When the three days are up your account simply drops to the free plan and keeps working — no lapse, no lockout, no invoice. You'll get one email the day before it ends so it isn't a surprise, and upgrading is entirely your decision.
Yes, from the Subscription page, and the two directions behave differently on purpose. Upgrading monthly → annual takes effect immediately and you're only charged the difference, prorated. Downgrading annual → monthly is scheduled for the end of the year you already paid for, so you never lose time you've bought and you're never double-charged. Either way you see exactly what will happen, and the amount, before you confirm.
Sometimes. When we run an offer, the code is entered on the checkout page and the discount shows before you confirm — you will never be charged a price you have not seen. Unless a specific offer says otherwise a code applies to your first billing period only, after which the plan renews at its standard price. Because both plans share one product, a code used on the annual plan discounts that first year rather than a single month.
If something's gone wrong — you were charged twice, charged after cancelling, or the product didn't do what we said — contact us and we'll sort it out. That's the honest answer rather than a policy wall. The three-day trial with no card exists precisely so you can find out whether Pro is worth it before any money changes hands.
Nothing is deleted. Your watchlist, your play log and your stats all stay exactly where they are — you just lose the Pro-only views until you resubscribe. If you were over the free tier's 5-game watchlist limit, the extra games are locked, not removed, so you can choose which to keep rather than having us pick for you. Deleting your account is a separate, explicit action, and that one is permanent.
Open "Log Win/Loss," pick the game you just played, tap Won or Lost, and — if you won — tap the amount. It takes a few seconds, no photo needed. Because every entry maps to a real game, your spend and winnings are tracked automatically and checked against that game's actual prize amounts.
Yes, and we think it's the most useful thing in the app. Set a monthly budget and ScratchSmart tracks your net position — spend minus winnings — not just what you've laid out. If you spend $500 and win $600, you haven't blown a $100 budget, and we won't tell you that you have. If you're genuinely over, you'll see it early, and there's a Responsible Play page with real resources whenever you want them.
The ticket artwork on the Tickets page comes directly from the official state lottery sources, matched to each game. If a state doesn't publish a reliable image, we show a clean generated ticket card instead.
Alerts fire when something actually changes: a game becomes a Hidden Gem or lands on a Hot Streak, a new game launches in your state, the nationwide top pick changes, or — for games on your watchlist — the last top prize gets claimed, the payout shifts meaningfully, the ranking moves, or the game ends. Each type has its own icon so you can scan the list without reading every line. We don't send anything on a day when nothing happened.
Settings → Alerts → Email digest, which is Daily, Weekly, or Off. Whatever you pick, the alerts still appear in the app — that setting only controls the email. You can also mute individual alert categories there if, say, you want new-game notices but not payout shifts.
Yes, and that's the default relationship between the two. Set the email digest to Off and the in-app bell keeps working exactly as before. Turning off the email never turns off an alert — it only stops us mailing you about it.
No. We don't send SMS and we don't ask for your mobile number. Everything reaches you either in the app or by email.
Every email has a one-click unsubscribe link, and it works without signing in. Offers and product news are a separate setting from your game alerts — turning off marketing never silences the alerts you asked for, and muting alerts never leaves you receiving marketing. You can manage both in Settings → Alerts. Emails about your own account — a payment, a cancellation, your trial ending — always come through, because they're about something you need to know.
Check your spam or junk folder first. ScratchSmart is a new sender, and new senders very often land there for the first message or two — marking it "not spam" also helps every future email reach you. If it isn't there, the "check your email" screen after signup has a resend link. If it still doesn't arrive, email support@scratchsmart.app from the address you signed up with and we'll confirm your account manually — you won't need to start over, and you won't lose your trial.
Almost always because we're a new sender your provider hasn't seen before — it has nothing to do with the content. Moving one message to your inbox, or marking it "not spam", teaches your provider to deliver the rest. Adding support@scratchsmart.app and alerts@scratchsmart.app to your contacts makes it stick faster. Our domain is fully authenticated (SPF, DKIM and DMARC all pass), so the messages are genuinely from us and not spoofed.
Yes, and it takes about thirty seconds — there is no app store download. On iPhone, open scratchsmart.app in Safari, tap Share, then Add to Home Screen. On Android, open it in Chrome, tap the ⋮ menu, then Install app. It then opens full-screen like a normal app and still works when you are standing in a shop with poor signal.
Head to our Support page to send a report straight to our team, or email us any time at support@scratchsmart.app. We read every message.
We only store what's needed to run your account and the features you use. We don't sell your data. You can delete your account and all associated data at any time from Settings. Full detail is in our Privacy Policy.