Powerball jackpots grow about a third faster per week than Mega Millions, and the $5 ticket slowed Mega Millions down

According to the game's own announcement of the change, Mega Millions raised its ticket to $5 on April 8, 2025 and lifted its starting jackpot from $20 million to $50 million. Seventeen months and eight jackpot cycles later, there is enough data to say how the two big games grow next to each other. Powerball grows faster. Measured against the calendar, it adds about a third more to its jackpot each week than Mega Millions does, and Mega Millions grows more slowly per week now than it did when tickets were $2.

The comparison covers all drawings of both games from April 2025 through September 7, 2026, grouped into jackpot cycles that start at each reset. Powerball has run ten cycles in that span. Mega Millions has run eight, two of them cut short by a win inside the first week.

Per drawing, close. Per week, not close

One Mega Millions drawing adds a little more than one Powerball drawing once the jackpot is past the early stage. In the range from $90 million to $300 million, where both games spend most of their time, the median Mega Millions step is $16.0 million and the median Powerball step is $14.2 million. That is what a higher ticket price and a higher jackpot share per ticket buy.

Powerball draws three times weekly on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. Mega Millions draws two times weekly on Tuesday and Friday. Three steps a week at $14.2 million beats two at $16.0 million, and the weekly figures show it.

The third row is the surprise. When it was at $2 a ticket, Mega Millions was adding $42 million a week in the same jackpot range. At $5 it adds $33 million. The price increase cut the number of tickets sold by more than the extra jackpot money per ticket made up for, at least in the part of a cycle where the jackpot is between $90 million and $300 million.

Days it takes for jackpot to reach $100 million, $200 million, and $300 million

Mega Millions gets to $100 million faster than it used to because it starts at $50 million instead of $20 million. After that the head start is gone. To $200 million it now takes a median 46 days against 37 days at the old price, and against 31 days for Powerball. Four Mega Millions cycles since the change have reached $300 million, taking between 56 and 67 days. Powerball's three cycles to $300 million took 42, 49, and 49 days.

The first five Mega Millions jackpots are the same every time

One feature of the $5 game shows up in the data before any sales do. In all six Mega Millions cycles since the change that ran at least five drawings, the advertised jackpot went $50 million, $60 million, $70 million, $80 million, $90 million, exactly, one drawing after the next. The $10 million increase steps then loosen up and start tracking sales, to $100 million or $110 million on the sixth drawing and $120 million to $138 million on the eighth.

Powerball's early steps vary from cycle to cycle. Its fifth drawing has landed anywhere from $65 million to $88 million since April 2025, depending on how the first two weeks sold. So for the first two and a half weeks of a Mega Millions cycle the advertised number is a schedule, and the sales-driven part of the climb starts from $90 million.

Drawing for drawing, Mega Millions stays ahead, because it started $30 million ahead. Drawing ten for Mega Millions is about five weeks in. Drawing ten for Powerball is three weeks in. The two columns are not measuring the same amount of time, and the weekly figures above are the fairer comparison.

None of this changes what a ticket is worth. Mega Millions promised regular $800 million jackpots at $5 and has averaged less than that, and a Powerball ticket returns the same few cents on the dollar at any jackpot size. What the data settles is a narrower question. If two players buy in the same week, one on each game, the Powerball number on the sign will be moving faster.

How we did this. Advertised jackpots and winners are from our drawing database for all Powerball and Mega Millions drawings from January 1, 2024 through September 7, 2026. A cycle begins at the first drawing after a jackpot win, at $20 million for Powerball and for Mega Millions before April 8, 2025, and at $50 million for Mega Millions after. The Mega Millions cycle in progress on April 8, 2025 is excluded from both eras. Step sizes count drawings where the starting jackpot was between $90 million and $300 million; weekly growth is each step divided by the days between drawings and scaled to seven days, then the median taken. Milestone days are counted from the reset drawing to the first drawing at or above the threshold, medians over cycles that reached it. Advertised jackpots are annuity values and move with interest rates as well as sales; the rate effect is not removed here.