How to find the best-value UK competitions

It's tempting to treat the lowest-priced competition as the best one. A 49p entry feels like better value than a £4.99 one. But the ticket price on its own tells you almost nothing. What matters is what you're getting for that price: the size of the prize, the realistic chance of winning it, and how many other people are paying in.

A 49p ticket into a competition with 200,000 entries and a £1,000 prize is poor value. A £2 ticket into a competition for a £2,000 prize capped at 1,500 entries can be far better, even though the ticket costs four times as much. To compare them properly you need a single number that takes prize, price and entries into account, and that number is expected value.

Expected value is the average outcome of an entry if you could play it many times over. The arithmetic is simple:

EV ≈ (prize value ÷ total entries) − ticket cost

Take a worked example with round numbers. A prize worth £2,000, a competition capped at 2,000 entries, and a ticket price of £2. The first part, £2,000 ÷ 2,000 entries, is £1, the average prize value attached to each ticket. Subtract the £2 you paid, and the expected value is −£1. On average, each entry loses £1.

Now flip the numbers. The same £2,000 prize, the same £2 ticket, but only 800 entries: £2,000 ÷ 800 is £2.50, minus the £2 cost gives an EV of +£0.50. The cheaper-looking competition wasn't the better one. The second has a smaller field, so each ticket carries more of the prize. EV captures that in a single figure, which is why CompWatch uses it to rank competitions rather than ranking by ticket price. For more on how the chance side of this works, see our guide on how competition odds work.

EV on its own can still mislead you, because it doesn't care how often you actually win. EV measures value per pound; the odds measure your chance of taking the prize home. The best entries are strong on both, and the two don't always move together.

Take two competitions with a £1 ticket. The first is a £100,000 prize with 100,000 tickets; the second a £1,000 prize with 1,000 tickets. Both have an EV of roughly zero, so EV alone rates them equal. But the first is a 1-in-100,000 shot and the second is 1-in-1,000. For almost anyone hoping to actually win something, the second is the better entry, even though the maths calls them the same.

So treat value as a blend. A healthy EV tells you you're not overpaying; good odds tell you you have a realistic chance. A long-odds, big-prize draw suits someone happy to rarely win something large; a short-odds, smaller-prize draw suits someone who wants a genuine shot. The sweet spot, and what best value really means in practice, is a competition that scores well on both at once.

The single biggest mistake in judging value is using today's ticket sales as the total. The odds a site shows right now only reflect the tickets sold so far. Most competitions sell many more before they close, so those odds are provisional: they will get worse as the field fills up.

Imagine a competition that has sold 300 tickets and is capped at 3,000. Right now it looks like a 1-in-300 shot, and the EV on those numbers looks generous. But if it sells out, you're really facing 1-in-3,000, which is ten times longer odds, and a tenth of the per-ticket prize value. The honest figure to plan around is the if-sold-out number: the odds and EV when every available ticket is sold. CompWatch shows both the current and the if-sold-out figures, and ranks best value on the if-sold-out basis so you're never flattered by an empty field.

The headline prize value can be optimistic. A car advertised at its full retail "from new" price, or a luxury holiday valued at a brochure rate, may be worth less than the number on the banner. The most honest figure to put into an EV calculation is the cash alternative: the amount the operator will pay you instead of the prize if you'd rather take the money.

If a £30,000 car comes with a £24,000 cash alternative, the cash figure is the one a rational entrant should use, because it's what the prize is genuinely worth to the operator. Using the cash alternative keeps your EV grounded in reality rather than marketing. Where a competition publishes one, CompWatch uses it as the prize value in our rankings.

There's a quick sense-check that doesn't even need your own ticket count. Multiply the ticket price by the total number of tickets (the cap) to get the maximum revenue the operator can raise, then compare that to the cash alternative.

• 3,000 tickets at £2 each is £6,000 of potential revenue for a £2,000 cash prize, a ratio of 3.0. The operator collects three times the prize value, so the field is large relative to the prize and value to entrants is thin.
• 1,500 tickets at £2 each is £3,000 for that same £2,000 prize, a ratio of 1.5. Much tighter, and far better for entrants.

A ratio close to 1 means almost every pound paid in comes back out as prize value (good for you, slim for the operator); a high ratio means the prize is small relative to the money being collected. It's a fast way to spot whether a competition is generously or thinly priced before you bother with the full EV sum.

A ticket cap is the maximum number of entries a competition can sell. It's the most important number for value, because it sets your worst-case odds and the largest possible field. A competition with a clearly stated, modest cap protects your odds; one with no cap, or a very high cap, can dilute your chance almost without limit as more people enter.

Caps also tell you something about the operator. A published, sensible cap is a sign of transparency: you can work out your real odds and your real EV. A missing or sky-high cap makes both impossible to pin down, which is a value problem and a transparency one. When you compare competitions, always read the cap, not just the price, and base your odds on it.

The best value of all can be free. Under the Gambling Act 2005, a paid prize competition stays the right side of the law (and out of licensed gambling) if it either turns on genuine skill or judgement, or offers a free entry route into the same draw on equal terms. That free route is normally by post, and where it exists it has no ticket cost, so its expected value can only be positive: you're getting a share of the prize for the price of a stamp and a little effort. Our free postal entry guide explains exactly how the route is meant to work and how to use it.

Just above free sit the very cheap paid entries. A well-priced sub-£1 ticket into a small field can still carry real value, especially when the prize is large relative to the cap. CompWatch keeps dedicated views for both: free-entry competitions and the cheapest entries, so you can start from the lowest-cost end and work up.

Here's the part the marketing never mentions. Even after you've found the best-value competition on the board, most paid entries still have a slightly negative expected value. Operators have to cover prizes, payment fees and a margin, so on average the field pays in a little more than the prizes are worth. That's normal, and it's how these businesses fund themselves, but it means treating entries as a way to make money is a mistake.

What the methods above let you do is enter on the best available terms: avoid the genuinely poor-value competitions, lean on free and low-cost routes, and never overpay for a thin prize in a huge field. Spend only what you're comfortable losing, set yourself a budget, and treat any win as a bonus rather than a plan. This guide is general information, not investment or financial advice. If competitions ever stop feeling like fun, our play responsibly page has support and tools to help.