Lottery Combinations Calculator

About this calculator

The number of ways a lottery draw can turn out is a combination, not a permutation, because the order the balls are drawn in does not matter — matching all six numbers wins regardless of which one came out first. The count of possible draws is given by the combination formula, n choose k, written C(n, k) = n! / (k! × (n − k)!), where n is the size of the number pool and k is how many numbers are drawn.

This is why lottery odds sound so extreme: a typical 6-from-49 lottery has C(49, 6) = 13,983,816 possible combinations, meaning a single ticket has roughly a 1-in-14-million chance of matching every number for the jackpot. Lottery operators publish these odds precisely because they follow directly from this combinatorics formula, and players use a calculator like this to compare the odds across different lottery formats or to understand just how the jackpot probability changes when a pool adds or drops a single number.

Enter the size of the number pool and how many numbers are drawn, and the calculator returns the total combinations and the jackpot odds.