Online competitions in the UK
There are three ways into a UK competition: pay for tickets online, enter free by post, or send a premium-rate text. All three must carry the same chance of winning, and the free route is what makes a paid competition lawful without a gambling licence. What follows is what each one costs, and the five things worth checking before you enter anywhere.
The three routes in
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Online, paying for tickets
From 9p a ticket here, in minimum orders of 25, so £2.25 is the smallest order.
The usual route. You pay by card, your ticket numbers are issued immediately and you can see them in your account before the draw.
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Free by post
A stamp and a postcard. Nothing to the operator.
Legally this is the route that lets a paid competition run without a gambling licence, so it has to be real. A postal entry must carry the same chance as a paid ticket and go into the same draw.
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Premium-rate text
Common on radio and TV competitions. Heart's published terms, checked 30 October 2026, price a text entry at £2 plus your standard network rate, with a free entry route by phone.
Nothing wrong with it, but the cost per entry is far higher than a low-price online ticket, and the free route tends to be the one nobody uses because it is the one nobody mentions on air.
The text-entry figure is Heart’s own published competition terms, checked 30 October 2026. Prices change: check the competition’s own rules before you enter it.
Why the free route matters more than it looks
It is tempting to read the postal route as a technicality nobody uses. It is the opposite: it is the thing holding the whole structure up. A competition where money buys a chance, and the winner is picked at random, is a lottery, and lotteries need a licence that an ordinary company cannot get. Two things take a competition out of that definition. One is a genuine skill question. The other is a free route of equal standing.
“Equal standing” is doing real work in that sentence. A free entry has to go into the same draw, with the same chance, and be as easy to use as paying. An operator that gives postal entrants worse odds, or hides the address, has not met the test, whatever the terms say. It is the single most useful thing to look at when you are deciding whether a site is serious.
Five things to check before you enter anywhere
- Is the ticket cap published? Without it you cannot work out your chance before you pay, because the total you would divide by does not exist yet.
- Is the free entry route easy to find? A route buried three clicks into the terms is technically present and practically absent. It should be linked from the competition itself.
- Does the draw go ahead if it does not sell out? If an operator can cancel or roll over for low sales, the risk of a quiet month has been moved onto you after you paid.
- Can you check the result afterwards? A video of a wheel is something you watch. The stronger answer is a result you can recompute from published numbers.
- Is the company named, with a number? A promoter has to give a real company name and address. Companies House is free and takes a minute.
Those five apply to us as much as to anybody, and the longer version of the checklist says what a good answer to each sounds like. If you only use one, use the first: without a published cap there is no arithmetic to do, and any odds figure you are quoted is an estimate.
What entering here looks like
You answer a skill question, choose how many tickets you want, and pay by card. Your ticket numbers are issued immediately and sit in your account. The ticket cap, the closing date and the draw time are on the competition page before you pay, so you can work out your chance first. The draw runs at 9pm on the closing date whether or not it has sold out, and the result is published with the numbers anybody needs to recompute it.
If you would rather not pay at all, the free postal route takes the same odds, and our free draw has nothing to buy.
Common questions
Are online competitions legal in the UK?
Yes, when they are run properly. A paid competition is lawful without a gambling licence if it turns on a genuine skill question, or if it offers a free entry route carrying the same chance as a paid ticket. That is the Gambling Act 2005 test. An online draw with no skill element and no real free route is an unlicensed lottery, which is a different thing entirely.
How much do online competitions cost to enter?
It varies enormously. Tickets here are 9p each in minimum orders of 25, so £2.25 is the smallest order you can place. Elsewhere single tickets of £1 to £25 are common, and a premium-rate text entry on a radio competition is often £2 a go. The number worth comparing is not the ticket price but the price of a given chance: a cheap ticket in an enormous draw can be worse value than a dearer one in a small draw.
Can I enter online competitions for free?
Yes, two ways. Some competitions are free outright, with no paid route at all. And every properly run paid competition has to offer a free entry route, normally by post, carrying exactly the same chance as a paid ticket. Ours is a postcard. Grand Draws also runs an outright free draw with nothing to buy.
Are online competitions safe?
The safe ones share the same habits: a published ticket cap, a free route that is easy to find, a draw that goes ahead whether or not it sells out, a result you can check afterwards, and a named company you can look up. None of that requires trusting anybody. An operator that does all five is telling you how it works; one that does none is asking for faith.
What happens after I enter online?
You should get your ticket numbers straight away, be able to see them in your account, and be told the closing date and the draw time before you pay. After the draw the winner should be published. If any of those three is missing, that is worth noticing before you enter again.
See what is open now
Every Grand Draws competition shows its ticket cap, closing date and draw time before you pay, and carries a free postal route on the same odds. 18+, Great Britain.
Your ticket could be next
Every competition has published odds, a draw anyone can verify and a free postal route. 18+.