How We Rank Competitions

How we calculate value

Every competition gets a value score built from four things: the prize value, the entry price, the size of the ticket pool, and how close the draw is to closing. In plain terms, it is how much you could win set against what a ticket costs and how many tickets are in play, weighted towards draws closing soon. The competition offering the most for your money rises to the top of the Best Value view. Where a draw has a published cash alternative, we use that cash figure for value (it is what you can actually take home) rather than an inflated retail prize estimate. For physical prizes with no published cash alternative, we apply a modest discount to the headline value, since a stated retail price is not the same as cash in hand.

Ticket bundles

Many operators sell tickets in discounted bundles. On its own, our ranking uses the single-ticket price and shows any ticket bundle as a label on the card. But set a budget in the filters and we will do the maths properly, working out how many tickets your spend buys at the best available bundle and re-ranking on that basis, so you see the genuine best value option for what you are willing to spend.

Data freshness

Competition data is tracked directly from each operator and updated at regular intervals through the day. We refresh more often as draws get busier, moving to minute by minute through the evening when the most competitions are closing. Tracking pauses overnight and resumes at 8am, which is deliberate rather than the site being down. Some operators only publish estimated ticket counts, and our figures can occasionally lag the operator's own page, so always confirm prices, remaining tickets and terms on the operator's site before you enter. The live "updated" time on every page shows you exactly how fresh the data is.

How we will rank operators

Competition ranking (Best Value) is about the draw in front of you. Operator ranking is about whether that site is a durable, legitimate UK prize-draw business. A new themed site should not outrank a long-running Companies House operator just because it publishes a slightly tidier FAQ.

The intended score, to be applied to site review pages, weights four bands:

• Track record (about 35%). Years incorporated, continuous live competitions, and a real registered company — not a brand wrapper with no history.
• Compliance (about 25%). DCMS voluntary code signatory, a published postal route, and terms that match what the site actually sells.
• Reputation (about 20%). Trustpilot score only counts with a meaningful review volume. A 5.0 from twelve reviews does not beat a 4.6 from thousands.
• Transparency (about 20%). Live ticket counts, cash alternatives, and bulk prices we can scrape. Estimated pools and hidden remaining tickets lose marks.

Theme, humour, or a novelty brand name is not a ranking factor. Those sites can still score well if they are properly incorporated, code-signatory, and transparent — they just do not get a bonus for being new or gimmicky. Full scoring is not live on the site cards yet; the All Star review page already uses the criteria we will score against (incorporation, DCMS, Trustpilot, postal terms).

Our independence

This is the part that matters. Our ranking is built purely from public pricing, ticket and deadline data. There is no commission rate, partner status or revenue weighting anywhere in it. We earn affiliate commission on some competitions when you click through or buy a ticket, and that changes nothing about where a competition ranks. A draw that pays us nothing can and does rank above one that pays us well, because value is the only input. That is the whole point of Prizequest.