The Most & Least Drawn Lottery Numbers (Real Data, All 4 Games)
“We counted every number across 10,000+ Lotto Max, 6/49, Powerball and Mega Millions draws. Here are the most and least drawn — and the honest reason it won't help you win.”
Everyone who has ever bought a lottery ticket has wondered it at least once: are some numbers luckier than others? Instead of guessing, we counted. Across the complete recorded history of all four games we track — Lotto Max, Lotto 6/49, Powerball and Mega Millions, more than 10,000 verified draws in total — here is exactly how often every number has come up: which appear most, which appear least, and the honest statistical truth about what that does and doesn't mean for your ticket. Every figure below comes straight from our own database and updates after each new draw.
Lotto 6/49 — 4,427 draws since 1982
Canada's original choose-your-own-numbers game has the longest history in our database, which makes its frequency spread the most settled. The ten most-drawn numbers, in order, are 45 (drawn 597 times), 34 (586), 31 (584), 40 (580), 46 (569), 38 (564), 43 (564), 23 (563), 27 (562) and 7 (561).
At the cold end, number 14 is the laggard — drawn 493 times — followed closely by 1 (501), 18 (514), 28 (516) and 6 (517). Notice how tight that spread is: across 4,427 draws, even the coldest number has appeared within about 17% of the hottest. That narrow gap is exactly what a fair, random draw produces over a long history. You can see the full ranking, refreshed after every draw, on the Lotto 6/49 stats page.
Lotto Max — 1,246 draws since 2009
Lotto Max is drawn twice a week but has a shorter history, so its totals are lower. The most-drawn numbers are led by 28 and 7 (201 appearances each), then 19 (200), 39 (194), 36 (193), and 22 and 2 (192 each).
The cold end comes with a caveat that actually matters — and that most 'lucky number' sites get wrong. Numbers 51 and 52 have been drawn only 3 times each, but not because they are 'overdue': they simply did not exist in the game until April 2026, when Lotto Max expanded its range from 1–50 to 1–52. Setting those two newcomers aside, the genuinely least-drawn number is 50 (103 appearances), followed by 49 (151), 33 (155), and 27 and 23 (157 each). Full list on the Lotto Max stats page.
Powerball — 1,958 draws since 1992
On the US side, Powerball's most-drawn white-ball numbers are 28 (174 appearances), 23 (171), 36 (170), 21 (167), and 32 and 39 (166 each).
The least-drawn numbers are all clustered at the top of the range — 65 (88 appearances), 60 (94), 68 (96), 66 (99) and 67 (100). There is an honest reason most 'lucky number' sites never mention: Powerball has changed its number pool several times and only expanded to the current 1–69 range in 2015. The highest numbers simply haven't existed for as many draws, so their low counts reflect history, not luck. See the live ranking on the Powerball stats page.
Mega Millions — 2,513 draws since 1996
Mega Millions has the second-longest history we track. Its hottest numbers are 31 (239 appearances), 10 (236), 17 (231), 20 (228) and 14 (227), followed by 46 (219), 24 (217), and 39 and 2 (216 each).
Its coldest numbers are again the highest ones — 67 (69 appearances), 65 (75), 60 (78), and 70 and 61 (84 each). The same caveat as Powerball applies: Mega Millions expanded its matrix over the years and only adopted the current 1–70 range in 2017, so the top of the range has had fewer chances to appear. The Mega Millions stats page shows the current full ranking.
The catch every honest analyst has to tell you
Here is the part the 'lucky numbers' websites leave out: none of this predicts anything. Every draw is an independent event. The fact that 45 has come up 597 times in Lotto 6/49 while 14 has come up 493 times tells you nothing about what will happen in the next draw. The random number generators that Canadian lotteries have used since 2019 have no memory of past results, and no number is ever 'due.' The gaps you see above are exactly the kind of natural variance you would expect from tens of thousands of random draws — flip a coin 4,427 times and you will not land on a perfect 50/50 split either.
If past frequency actually predicted future draws, professional gamblers would have bankrupted every lottery decades ago. They haven't, because it can't.
So what is the data actually good for?
One genuinely useful thing: knowing which numbers other people over-play. Players cluster heavily on numbers under 32 (birthdays), on 'lucky' numbers like 7 and 13, and on the previous week's winning numbers. Those combinations get played by far more people — so if one of them hits, the jackpot is split many ways. Choosing less popular numbers won't improve your odds of winning, but it does improve your odds of not sharing the prize if you do. That is the only real edge hiding in this data, and it is about payout, not probability.
The other useful thing you can do with the full history is check your own combination against it. If you've played the same set for years, you can test it against every Lotto 6/49 draw on record, or do the same for Lotto Max, Powerball or Mega Millions. The answer is almost always 'never drawn' — which, as the numbers above show, is true of nearly every possible combination, and tells you nothing about whether it will come up next. Play for fun, set a budget, and treat these stats as trivia, not a system.
Sources