Everybody talks about Broadway lottery odds. Almost nobody talks about the actual number you pay when you win, which is strange, because the whole point is that it’s cheap.
The spread is bigger than people think. The cheapest lottery ticket in New York right now is ten dollars. The most expensive one is sixty. That’s a six-to-one range on the same city block, and the price has almost nothing to do with how good the show is.
So here’s the entire lottery board, Broadway and Off-Broadway, ranked by what you actually hand over. Prices are what the show posts; add the odd service fee where the platform doesn’t include it.
Under $25: the four cheapest seats in New York
- Hamilton — $10. Still the lowest number on Broadway, nine years in. Enter in the Hamilton app or on the show’s site. The window opens Friday morning and covers the following week, which makes it the one lottery you can’t enter daily. Odds are brutal. Enter anyway; it’s ten dollars.
- Katsura Sunshine’s Rakugo — $20. Telecharge, fee included, entered at rush.telecharge.com. Japanese comic storytelling in English, Off-Broadway, and one of the softest lotteries in town because most people have never heard of it.
- Maybe Happy Ending — $20.64. Telecharge. Yes, sixty-four cents. I have no explanation and I’ve stopped asking. Best value on the Broadway board and it isn’t close.
If you only add one thing to your routine this week, make it Maybe Happy Ending. Twenty bucks for a Broadway musical is a price that shouldn’t exist.
$30 to $40: the sweet spot
- The Rocky Horror Show — $30, TodayTix. Winners drawn before each performance.
- The Play That Goes Wrong — $35, its own lottery. Read this part twice: entry opens at midnight and closes at 3 PM two days before the performance. Not the day before. Two days. This cutoff eats more entries than any other rule on the board.
- Heathers: The Musical — $38, Telecharge. Available performances post two days out and don’t always exist, so check rather than assume.
- Perfect Crime, Singfeld! A Musical About Nothing, Friends! The Musical Parody — $39 each, all Lucky Seat, all at the Theater Center on 50th. Three separate lotteries in one building. Enter all three; you’re already on the site.
- Little Shop of Horrors — $40, Telecharge, at rush.telecharge.com.
- Harry Potter and the Cursed Child — $40, TodayTix app. Tom Felton is in it through November 1, which has done nothing good for the odds.
This band is where I’d spend most of my entries. The prices are still genuinely low, the shows are real, and the entry pools are a fraction of what the $10 and $49 headliners pull.
$45 to $49: the crowded middle
- $45 — Six, Schmigadoon!, The Lost Boys (Broadway Direct) and The Great Gatsby (its own lottery).
- $47 — Oh, Mary! (Telecharge).
- $49 — The Outsiders, Operation Mincemeat, Buena Vista Social Club, CATS: The Jellicle Ball (Telecharge); MJ (Broadway Direct, opens 9 AM the day before, closes 3 PM); Hadestown and Moulin Rouge (Lucky Seat, and Moulin Rouge‘s weekday entries close at 9:30 AM the day before); Death of a Salesman (Telecharge, midnight to 3 PM the day before).
- Jamie Allan’s Amaze — $49, Telecharge, Off-Broadway, fee included.
Two of those are closing in days — CATS: The Jellicle Ball on August 8, Salesman on August 9 — and Moulin Rouge goes on August 30. If you want them at lottery price, this is the week.
Forty-nine dollars is the default Broadway lottery price in 2026, and it’s where the most entries pile up. Nothing wrong with it. Just don’t build your entire routine out of the same number everyone else is chasing.
$55 and up: the long shots you enter anyway
- Wicked — $55, Broadway Direct.
- The Lion King — $60, Broadway Direct, entries 9 AM to 3 PM the day before.
Sixty dollars for The Lion King is still a fraction of the box office, and both of these run every day of the week. They’re a rounding error in your morning routine. They’re just never the reason you got a ticket.
The ones without a posted price
A handful of lotteries run without publishing the number up front: Stranger Things: The First Shadow, Aladdin (Broadway Direct), The Book of Mormon (Lucky Seat), Titanique (Lucky Seat, closing September 20), Ragtime and Two Strangers (Telecharge), Just in Time and Heated Rivalry (TodayTix), and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (Telecharge). You find out the price when you win. It has always landed in the normal range for me, but go in knowing that.
How to actually use this list
Sort your entries by price, not by how badly you want the show. That sounds backwards and it isn’t. The expensive lotteries are the famous ones, the famous ones draw the most entries, and a routine built entirely out of famous shows is a routine that wins about twice a year.
My rough split each morning: one long shot at whatever price, two or three in the $30–$40 band, and one Off-Broadway entry that almost nobody else is bothering with. Takes about four minutes across four apps.
The mechanics — which account you need, when each window opens, what happens after you win — live in how to win every Broadway lottery and the platform guide. If you’d rather see the current board than read my ranking of it, the lottery hub is live and filters by platform.
And if the number still stings, remember what you’re comparing it to. Twenty dollars and change for a Broadway musical is less than two beers at intermission.
