What the extra dollar actually buys

Every lottery advertises the add-ons and none of them prices them. They are priceable: the ball pool is published, the prize multiples are published, and neither depends on anything we have to estimate. So here is what a dollar buys in Georgia, next to what the base ticket's non-jackpot prizes are worth per dollar — and the order may surprise you.

Where the dollar goes	On sale in Georgia?	Returns per $1	How exact
The base ticket, below the jackpot	Always — it is the ticket	16c	Exact. Fixed prizes, published odds.
Power Play (+$1)	Yes	46c–50c	Exact. The range is the 10× ball, which is only in the drum below a $150 million jackpot.
Double Play (+$1)	Not sold here	53c	Exact, and the only one with no jackpot in it at all.

Read the column again: the add-ons return roughly three times what the base ticket's own prize table does. That is not an argument for buying them — every row is still a loss, and the base ticket's missing value is in the jackpot, which the add-ons mostly do not touch. It is an argument that "Power Play is a rip-off, just buy more lines" is the opposite of what the arithmetic says.

Power Play multiplies everything except two tiers: the jackpot, which it never touches, and Match 5, which goes from $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 on a 2× and stays at $2,000,000 on a 10×. Pricing it as mean multiplier × prize table — which is what every explainer does — overstates it by more than half.

What a Georgia ticket is worth right now

The advertised jackpot is $516 million. The cash value is about $212 million, because the headline is a 30-year annuity and nobody takes it. At that jackpot our sales model puts the chance of having to share a win at enough that a winning ticket is worth 89% of the prize on average rather than all of it. Then Georgia withholds 5.39% — about $11 million of that cash value — and the federal 24% comes off on top of that. What a Georgia winner keeps after tax, beside every other state.

The withholding only comes off the jackpot term here, not off the whole figure. Nearly all of a ticket's non-jackpot value sits in the $4.00 and $7.00 tiers, which no state withholds on; taxing those too would push the number down in a way that happens to flatter our own conclusion, so we do not. The draw-by-draw chart behind this is on the Powerball page.

Hot and cold numbers

The drawing is national, so the frequencies are too — there is no Georgia hot number, only a Powerball one. Over 1,417 draws of the current 5/69 + 1/26 matrix, 21 has come up most (127 times against 103 expected) and 51 has waited longest, 57 draws.

21 has come up most often, 127 times. Each number averages about 103 over 1,417 draws, and whichever number happens to lead normally finishes around 23 ahead. 21 is 24 ahead, so this is an ordinary spread rather than a streak. 13 has come up least, 77 times.

Georgia's own draw games

Powerball is the same everywhere. These are not — Georgia Lottery runs them, and we hold their full history.

• 

  Cash 3

  Daily · 15,777 draws on file

  092
• 

  Cash 4

  Daily · 15,777 draws on file

  0693
• 

  Georgia Five

  Daily · 11,827 draws on file

  25561
• 

  Fantasy 5

  Daily · 6,125 draws on file

  56203940

All Georgia lottery results →

Georgia Powerball questions

Can you buy Power Play in Georgia?

Yes. It costs $1 a play on top of the $2 ticket and multiplies every prize below the jackpot by 2, 3, 4, 5 or 10 — the 10 only when the advertised jackpot is $150 million or less. We price that extra dollar at about 46 cents at a large jackpot and 50 cents when the 10× ball is in the drum.

Is Double Play available in Georgia?

No. 30 of the 48 Powerball lotteries offer Double Play and Georgia is not one of them, so a Georgia ticket tops out at $3 a line. powerball.com publishes the list, and says more lotteries may add it later.

How much tax does Georgia take from a Powerball win?

Georgia withholds 5.39%, on top of the 24% held back federally. On the cash value of the jackpot as it stands now that is about $11 million to the state alone. Withholding is not the final bill — what you actually owe is settled when you file. Run your own number through the calculator.

Are Powerball prizes in Georgia the same as the national prize chart?

Yes. Every prize below the jackpot is a set cash amount in Georgia, exactly as the national chart prints it. Only California pays pari-mutuel instead.

How old do you have to be to play Powerball in Georgia?

18. Georgia Lottery sets it, and a winning ticket has to be claimed in the jurisdiction where it was bought.

Where were the Georgia Powerball numbers drawn?

In Tallahassee, Florida, like every Powerball drawing — one drawing serves all 48 jurisdictions. The numbers on this page are the same numbers as everywhere else; what the page adds is what they are worth to a Georgia ticket. The national analysis is here.

Where these facts come from

The winning numbers are cross-checked against more than one official source before they go up — every source and every correction is listed. The Georgia-specific rules were read from powerball.com and Georgia Lottery on 2026-09-22, and bao draws jurisdictions re-reads the published lists on every run and fails if either has moved. How the expected values are computed.