The short answer. Powerball and Mega Millions are two separate multi-state jackpot
games that happen to work the same way: pick five numbers, plus one bonus ball drawn from a second,
smaller pool. They differ in the size of those pools, the nights they draw, and nothing else that
matters to a player.
The two games, side by side
Powerball and Mega Millions at a glance | Game | You pick | Drawn | Draw time (ET) |
|---|
| Powerball |
5 numbers from 1–69 + Powerball 1–26 |
Monday, Wednesday and Saturday |
10:59 PM ET |
| Mega Millions |
5 numbers from 1–70 + Mega Ball 1–24 |
Tuesday and Friday |
11:00 PM ET |
That table is read from our own archive rather than typed into this article, so if either game changes
its format the numbers above change with it.
Most recent Powerball draw on record: 7 Sep 2026 — 15, 19, 28, 39, 56 + PB 3.
Most recent Mega Millions draw on record: 8 Sep 2026 — 17, 30, 43, 58, 66 + MB 20.
Where the difference actually is
The bonus pool, not the main pool
Most people compare the main pools — 69 against 70 — and conclude the games are near
identical. The main pools barely matter. The bonus ball is drawn from its own separate set, and that
set is the smaller number: 26 for the Powerball, 24 for the Mega Ball. Because the jackpot requires
that ball as well as all five main numbers, the size of the smaller pool moves the jackpot odds more
than the difference of one number in the larger one.
The nights
Powerball draws three nights a week, Mega Millions two. If you follow both, there is a draw to check
on five nights out of seven, and on Tuesdays and Fridays the Mega Millions result lands about a minute
after the hour while Powerball is dark.
The consortium
Neither game is national. The United States has no national lottery. Each is run by a group of
participating state lotteries that pool their ticket sales into one prize fund, which is why the same
game is sold in most states but the rules for claiming a prize differ from one state to the next.
Following both from outside the United States
Both draws happen late at night Eastern time, which is the small hours in the Gulf and early morning
across South Asia. There is no need to be awake for either: the result is published within minutes of
the draw and sits in a dated archive afterwards. Our
Powerball results page and
Mega Millions results page each carry a local clock for US Eastern
time, so you can see at a glance whether tonight's draw has happened yet.
One honest caveat. We publish results, we do not sell entries, and we are not affiliated with
either game or with any state lottery. Where you can legally buy a ticket depends entirely on where you
are, and that is a question for the official operator rather than for us.
What the numbers do not tell you
Every draw in both games is independent. A number that has not appeared for months is not due, a number
that appeared last week is not hot, and no analysis of the archive changes what the next draw does. We
publish frequency counts for both games on our
lucky numbers page alongside a measurement of how our own number scoring
performed when tested against hundreds of past draws. It performed the same as picking at random, and
the page says so.
