Most Drawn Lotto 6/49 Numbers (All 4,427 Draws Since 1982)
“Four decades of Lotto 6/49 data. The most-drawn number is 45 (597 times), the rarest is 14 (493) — and the spread is exactly what fair randomness produces.”
Lotto 6/49 is Canada's original choose-your-own-numbers lottery, and it has the longest record of any game we track: 4,427 draws stretching all the way back to its first draw in June 1982. That makes its 'most drawn' list the most settled in the country — more than four decades of data. Here is exactly how often every number has come up, what's hot, what's cold, and the honest truth about what it means for your ticket.
The 10 most-drawn Lotto 6/49 numbers
The single most-drawn number in 6/49 history is 45, which has come up 597 times. Right behind it are 34 (586), 31 (584), 40 (580) and 46 (569), then 38 and 43 (564 each), 23 (563), 27 (562) and 7 (561). The full, always-current ranking lives on the Lotto 6/49 stats page.
The 10 least-drawn Lotto 6/49 numbers
At the other end, the coldest number is 14, drawn 493 times — followed by 1 (501), 18 (514), 28 (516), 6 (517), then 5 and 25 (518 each), 11 (520), 24 (521) and 16 (522). And unlike Lotto Max, which keeps adding numbers to its range, 6/49 has used the same 1-to-49 pool since 1982 — so this is a clean, apples-to-apples comparison. Every number has had the exact same number of chances.
What 44 years of data actually tells you
Here is where 6/49 gets genuinely interesting. With 4,427 draws of 6 numbers each, every number 'should' average about 542 appearances. The real figures run from 493 (number 14) to 597 (number 45) — a spread of roughly 100. Across more than 26,000 individual number draws, that gap is exactly what pure randomness produces; the most and least drawn numbers sit right where you'd expect the extremes of 49 fair numbers to fall. Four decades of data, and the 'pattern' is indistinguishable from chance.
Do the hot numbers win more often? No.
This is the part 'hot number' systems ignore: past frequency has no predictive power whatsoever. Every 6/49 draw is independent. Since May 2019 the numbers have been picked by a certified random number generator that replaced the old ball machines, and it has no memory of previous draws. The fact that 45 has appeared 597 times and 14 only 493 over 44 years tells you nothing about the next draw. If frequency predicted the future, the lottery would have gone bankrupt decades ago.
The only real edge in this data
There is exactly one useful takeaway, and it is about your payout, not your odds. Players cluster on the same numbers — birthdays (1–31), the 'lucky' 7, and the previous draw's winning set — so those combinations get shared by far more people. If a popular combination wins, the jackpot is split many ways. Choosing genuinely unpopular numbers won't make you more likely to win, but it will make you more likely to keep the whole prize if you do. That is the only edge here — not winning more, just sharing less.
Quick Lotto 6/49 facts
Lotto 6/49 is drawn every Wednesday and Saturday. You pick 6 numbers from 1 to 49, and the classic jackpot odds are 1 in 13,983,816. Since September 2022 the game also runs a separate Gold Ball draw — a guaranteed $1 million-plus prize every draw, with a growing jackpot that can reach $68 million. As with every Canadian lottery, the winnings are completely tax-free.
Want to know whether your own combination has ever come up? You can check any Lotto 6/49 set against all 4,427 draws since 1982 in seconds — the answer is almost always 'never drawn,' which is true of nearly every possible combination. You can also see the most-drawn Lotto Max numbers, or the full breakdown across all four games including Powerball and Mega Millions.