Millions of Premium Bonds prizes are paid out each month, with payouts ranging from £25 to £1 million.
But with no guarantee of winning anything at all, savers could be waiting a long time to get a prize.
Premium Bonds holders typically wait three and a half years before they win any prizes, according to a freedom of information request by the wealth manager Octopus Money.
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The long wait for a prize illustrates a disconnect between how long consumers anticipate waiting before they win a Premium Bonds prize, and how long they will likely need to wait in reality.
Almost a third of Premium Bonds holders expect to win a prize in the first six months after they bought their bonds, according to a survey of 2,000 UK adults commissioned by Octopus Money.
What are the chances of winning a Premium Bonds prize?
While NS&I’s prize fund rate, the average rate of return for a person with average luck, currently stands at 3.8%, there’s no guarantee of winning anything at all.
The odds of winning per £1 Bond number currently stand at 22,000 to one.
For every £1 you invest in Premium Bonds, you get one chance to win.
This means the distribution of prizes is heavily skewed towards people who have a significant amount of money saved in Premium Bonds as they have more individual chances of winning a prize.
In the past five years, 94% of Premium Bonds jackpot winners held more than £10,000, while 75% have over £25,000 invested in the vehicle, NS&I data shows.
Just under two thirds of all Premium Bonds holders have never won a penny from the savings vehicle, research by Dodl, AJ Bell’s investing app, found.
More than £4.25 billion has been held in Premium Bonds accounts that have had no activity in the entirety of the last decade, earning zero interest and letting the money erode to inflation.
If you do end up being one of the lucky few who end up winning, Octopus Money suggests the prize amount is often modest. In 2024, 88% of Premium Bonds prize winners took home less than £2,000 and just 0.32% of all winners won more than £10,000..
Ruth Handcock, CEO of Octopus Money said that while saving money in Premium Bonds may work well for some people, “others are missing out on strategies that could grow their wealth and deliver stronger returns over time”.
Handcock added that Premium Bonds are unlikely to outpace inflation, “so your money may seem ‘safe’ but it’s quietly shrinking in value over time".
How to check for Premium Bonds
With a 3.5 year average waiting period before you win a Premium Bonds prize, you may think it is not worth checking to see if you won anything every single month.
However, it is still a good idea to use the Premium Bonds prize checker and see if you had any luck – the process is quite simple once you have set your account up with NS&I.
NS&I updates the prize checker tool, available via app, website and Amazon Alexa, the day after the first working day of the month.
We explain how to check for Premium Bonds in a separate guide.
Savers should also check for unclaimed Premium Bonds prizes from years ago.
In June 2025, NS&I said there are 2,581,427 prizes worth £101,377,675 still to be claimed.
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