Data Sources & How We Update Results

This page explains, plainly, where the numbers on this site actually come from and how current they are — because for a site people use to check real tickets, that matters more than almost anything else here.

Where Winning Numbers Come From

Powerball, Mega Millions, and Millionaire for Life results are pulled from the New York State Open Data portal — a public, government-run dataset of official winning numbers, not a third-party aggregator. Each game has its own dataset on that platform, updated by New York State as results become official.

How Often Results Update

An automated process fetches the latest results and rebuilds the site's pages once per day. This means there can be a real gap between when a drawing happens and when it appears here — especially for Millionaire for Life, which draws every single night. The upstream government data source itself doesn't publish results instantly after a drawing, and our daily update runs on a fixed schedule, so a very recent drawing may not be reflected yet the next time you check. If a result looks like it's missing the most recent drawing, that's almost always this normal update lag rather than an error — try again in a few hours.

Known Limitations, Stated Plainly

We'd rather tell you what our data doesn't cover than let you assume it does:

• Jackpot amounts for upcoming drawings are not currently sourced from a reliable real-time feed, so pages may show "TBD" for the next drawing's estimated jackpot rather than a real-time figure.
• Lower prize-tier amounts can vary by state in ways our historical data doesn't always capture — always verify an actual prize amount against your specific state lottery.
• Our winning-numbers data does not cover every lottery game sold in the U.S., only the three noted above.

Rule and Tax Data

Game rules (ticket prices, number ranges, prize tiers, multiplier structures) and state tax rates are checked against official lottery and state government sources and updated when we identify a rule change — most recently, Mega Millions' April 2025 shift from an optional Megaplier add-on to a mandatory built-in multiplier and revised prize structure.

Corrections

If you find a result, rate, or rule that looks outdated or wrong, please double check it against the official source linked on the relevant page first — official state lottery sites are always the authoritative source, and this site is a reference layer on top of them, not a replacement for them.