I pulled the whole Broadway board this morning — every show playing right now, every discount program attached to it — and the number that came back surprised me. Twenty-five shows are running on Broadway. All twenty-five have at least one way in under full price. Zero exceptions.
That is not how it usually goes. There is normally a handful of titles where the only answer is “pay up or wait for the tour.” Not this week. Every marquee between 41st and 54th has a door, and some of them have six.
Here is the whole thing, sorted by how many doors each show gives you. Find yours, then go read the entry rules before you enter — the rules are where people lose.
The one-door shows: enter the lottery or pay retail
Four shows give you exactly one cheap route. No rush line, no standing room, no membership rate. If you miss the draw, you are buying a real ticket.
- Hamilton — $10 Ham4Ham, through the show’s own app. Weekly, not daily: entry opens Friday morning and closes Thursday at midday for the following week. Still the cheapest seat on Broadway by a mile, and still the hardest.
- The Lion King — $35 Broadway Direct lottery. Entries open in the morning and close mid-afternoon the day before.
- Aladdin — $35 Broadway Direct lottery, same window. Winners get sixty minutes to pay, which is short enough that you want notifications on.
- Harry Potter and the Cursed Child — $40 Friday Forty, run through TodayTix. Also weekly: enter any time from Monday until Friday afternoon for the following week.
Two of those four are weekly draws, which is a completely different habit from the daily ones. If you only ever enter in the morning, you have never entered either of them. I wrote up the whole weekly-lottery calendar for exactly that reason.
Two doors: a lottery and a backup
These ten pair a digital lottery with something you can do in person if the draw goes badly. The pattern is worth internalizing, because the backup is usually cheaper than the lottery.
- Stranger Things: The First Shadow — $45 Broadway Direct lottery, $40 rush at the Marquis box office.
- Schmigadoon! — $45 lottery, $40 rush at the Nederlander. Note the odd entry window on this one: it opens later in the morning than the rest of the Broadway Direct board.
- The Lost Boys — $45 lottery, $45 rush at the Palace. The one case where the two doors cost the same.
- Oh, Mary! — $47 lottery, $43 rush at the Lyceum.
- Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) — $48 lottery, $42 rush at the Longacre.
- Buena Vista Social Club — $49 lottery, $45 rush at the Schoenfeld.
- Paranormal Activity — $40 Lucky Seat lottery and $40 TodayTix rush, both stated as all-in prices including fees. The newest show on this list and one of only two on the whole board that tells you the real number up front.
- Hadestown — $49 lottery, $39 standing room at the Walter Kerr when the house sells out.
- MJ — $49 Broadway Direct lottery (that price includes a $2 facility fee and a $5 handling fee), plus standing room released two hours before a sold-out performance. The production does not publish an SRO price, so call.
- Just in Time — no lottery at all. $40 in-person rush when the Circle in the Square box office opens, or a $99 cancellation line in the TodayTix app.
Three doors: pick your trade-off
- Titanique — $49 Lucky Seat lottery, $49 TodayTix rush, $45 in person at the St. James. Three separate shots at the same show on the same day, and it closes September 20, so this is a now problem.
- The Book of Mormon — $49 Lucky Seat lottery (all-in), $49 TodayTix rush, and the $15 monthly drawing that closes on the 14th of each month. That $15 draw is the second-cheapest ticket on Broadway and almost nobody remembers to enter it.
- Six — $45 Broadway Direct lottery with an unusually late close, $49 standing room, $35 student rush. Six just set a January closing date, so the board on this one gets crowded fast.
- Operation Mincemeat — $59 Telecharge lottery, the show’s own $79 Ticket Draw covering two weeks at a time, and $49 rush at the John Golden. The rush is the cheapest of the three, which is not the order most people would guess.
- Chicago — no lottery. $49 rush, $39 standing room, and weekend matinee seats starting at $49.50. The oldest running show on this list and the one with the most honest pricing.
Four doors and up
- Maybe Happy Ending — the $20.64 Club 2064 lottery is the cheapest non-Hamilton seat on Broadway, and the winners get real mezzanine or orchestra seats rather than whatever is left. Backed by $49 in-person rush, $42 standing room, and a $49 Telecharge digital rush.
- & Juliet — $49 TodayTix rush, $49 rush at the Sondheim, $45 standing room including all fees, plus published group codes that knock money off two or four tickets.
- The Great Gatsby — $45 lottery, $40 general rush, $25 student rush, and a 30 percent advance-purchase code for anyone booking two weeks out. That $25 is the cheapest student seat on Broadway.
- Wicked — $55 Broadway Direct lottery, $45 in-person rush, $59 student rate on select midweek performances, $79 military rate. The lottery is the most expensive of the four, which is the single most useful thing on this page.
- The Outsiders — $49 lottery, $45 rush, $39 standing room, a military discount through GOVX, and $30 Under 30 at the box office. Five doors, and the cheapest one only checks the buyer’s ID, so your guest can be any age.
The six-door show
The Rocky Horror Show at Studio 54 has more ways in than anything else on Broadway: a $30 TodayTix lottery, $30 general rush at the box office, half-price student rush a half hour before curtain, Roundabout’s Hiptix at $30 for ages 18 to 40, Hiptix High at $10 for ages 14 to 18, and 40 percent off for military and veterans through Blue Star Theatres.
Ten dollars. For a high schooler. To a Broadway musical. That is tied with Hamilton for the cheapest ticket in the theater district and it does not require winning anything.
What to actually do with this
Three things fall out of the whole board once you see it laid flat.
The lottery is not automatically the cheapest door. Wicked’s lottery costs $10 more than walking up to the Gershwin. Mincemeat’s rush is $10 under its lottery. Six’s student rush beats its lottery by $10. If you are entering out of habit, you are sometimes paying a premium for the convenience of not standing anywhere.
The programs that check ID are the cheap ones. Hiptix, Hiptix High, LincTix, student rush, $30 Under 30, military rates — these are where the real prices are, and most of them let your companion be any age. If you qualify for one, stop entering lotteries.
Doors close with the show. Titanique goes September 20 and takes three of them with it. Every lottery on this page exists only as long as the run does.
The full board, updated daily, lives on the lottery hub. If you are new to this, start with how to win every Broadway lottery and then read the fine print that gets winners turned away — because the rules, not the odds, are what usually cost people the seat.
