How scratch-off odds really work, why the number printed on the back stops being true, and how ScratchSmart ranks every active game across 27 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.
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 27 states: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, 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, Washington, D.C., 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 27 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, there's a free tier — anyone can browse the Live Board and see the top-ranked picks in each state, with no account at all. A free account adds a watchlist. Pro unlocks the full ranking of every active game, ScratchScore™ on all games, Current Payback, estimated tickets remaining, Hidden Gems and 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 Payback 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 Payback 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 Payback 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.
On average, higher-priced tickets are printed with a higher payback 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.
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 27 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 payback 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.
Anyone can browse the Live Board and see the top-ranked picks for each state. A free account lets you track games and save a watchlist. The full ranking of every active game, ScratchScore™ on all games, Current Payback, estimated tickets remaining, Hidden Gems and alerts are Pro features.
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.
Go to Settings → Danger zone → Cancel subscription. That downgrades you to the free plan. You can also delete your account entirely there — that permanently removes your data and can't be undone.
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.
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.