A lottery pool lives or dies on one fact: the numbers. Everything downstream, every match, every prize, every payout to the cent, depends on the drawing being recorded correctly. So before any drawing appears on this site or is used to check a ticket, it has to pass a short, strict process. Here is that process, in plain words, as of October 2, 2026.
Where the numbers come from
We do not type results in by hand, and we do not take them from a single page. Each drawing is fetched from official sources that publish their data in a form a computer can read:
- Texas Lottery results files. The Texas Lottery’s winning-numbers pages for Powerball and Mega Millions each offer a “Download All Years” file (.csv) with the draw date, the five main numbers, the Powerball or Mega Ball, the multiplier, the estimated jackpot and whether the jackpot was won. It is updated the night of the drawing and is complete for both games.
- New York State open data. The New York State Gaming Commission publishes “Lottery Powerball Winning Numbers: Beginning 2010” on data.ny.gov, posted three times a week, with the draw date, the winning numbers, the multiplier and the Double Play numbers. Its Mega Millions dataset, “Beginning 2002,” is posted twice a week; we found it does not carry every drawing, so we use it only as a cross-check, never as the only voice.
- megamillions.com’s data service. The official Mega Millions site serves its own drawing data, including every drawing and the estimated jackpot. It is complete for Mega Millions.
Every drawing therefore has at least two complete official sources, and Powerball has three. Each source writes its own row in our records, with the URL it came from and a fingerprint of what it said. Nothing is merged.
The life of a result
A drawing moves through a fixed set of states, and only the last one is visible to the public:
- Scheduled. The drawing is on the calendar.
- Retrieving. The drawing time has passed. Starting about 20 minutes later, we ask each source for the result, and keep asking, backing off, until it arrives.
- Pending verification. One source has answered. The result page says “waiting for a second official source.” Nothing is checked yet. If only one source has reported 90 minutes after the drawing, the page keeps saying so.
- Verified, then published. A second source has answered with exactly the same numbers. The result is published, the open-data feed is recorded as the publication source and the other as the verifier, and ticket checking begins for every pool that covered the drawing.
- Disputed. The sources do not agree. Nothing is published. A person has to look.
- Stale. Nothing from any source six hours after the drawing. The page says so, and the platform’s admins are alerted.
“Agree” means the five main numbers and the special ball match exactly. The multiplier and jackpot figures are stored when a source provides them, but they are display-only.
When sources disagree
A disagreement is rare and almost always a typo or a timing gap at one source. Our rule is that the platform never picks a winner between sources. The drawing is marked disputed and goes to a review queue. A platform admin opens the official game site (powerball.com or megamillions.com), reads the result there, and resolves the dispute by entering it with the site’s URL and a screenshot. The resolution is an audit event. The rows from both sources stay exactly as they were; nothing is edited or deleted.
If the result had already been published and a source later changes what it says, the same thing happens, with one addition: every pool round that was checked against the old result is frozen, re-checked against the resolved result, and marked for review, and every member of those pools is told the before and the after. Changing a published result that any prize was calculated from needs a second platform person to confirm.
Why we never overwrite a result
A result is evidence. If a pool is ever in front of a lawyer, an accountant or a lottery claims office, the question “what did the site say on the night, and what does it say now?” has to have an answer that does not depend on anyone’s memory. So every row from every source is kept, every state change is an audit event, and corrections are new rows that point at the old ones. A result on this site is not just numbers; it is numbers with a history you can read.
The same rule runs through the whole product. A locked pool snapshot is never edited. A ticket photo is never replaced. A ledger line is never deleted. Results are simply the first place you meet it.
How to check a result yourself
Please do. We would rather you trust the official site than trust us.
- Find the drawing date on your ticket, and the game. A Powerball ticket for Saturday is not a ticket for Monday’s drawing, and a Mega Millions ticket is checked against Mega Millions only.
- Open the official site. Powerball results are on powerball.com; Mega Millions results are on megamillions.com, which has a “Previous Drawings” page you can search by date. Your state lottery’s site shows the same numbers.
- Compare the five main numbers as a set, not in order. The lottery draws them in one order and prints them sorted; your ticket is printed sorted too. Any order counts.
- Compare the special ball separately. The red Powerball or the gold Mega Ball has to match the special ball, not one of the five. A 12 in your main numbers does not match a Powerball of 12.
- Check the multiplier only if you bought it. Power Play or Megaplier multiplies non-jackpot prizes only if it is printed on your ticket, and Mega Millions prints the multiplier on the ticket itself.
- Double Play is its own drawing. A Powerball ticket with Double Play has a second set of results to check, and only in states that sell it.
Then compare with ours
Compare what you found with our results pages for Powerball or Mega Millions. If they differ, tell us through the contact page; a disagreement with the official site is exactly what the review queue is for.
What “verified” means on a results page
When a result page says “verified against two official sources,” it means precisely what this guide describes: two independent official feeds reported the same five numbers and the same special ball, and the record shows which two and when. It says nothing about future drawings, and it does not change your odds. It means the numbers your pool is checked against are the numbers that were drawn.
The “Results” stop on the Journey starts from the latest verified drawing. How to improve your chances explains the odds behind the numbers, and Lottery myths explains why past results do not change future ones.
