Online Lottery in India (2023): Full guide 📲 

There is no federal ban on lottery in India. Following a supreme court decision from 2015, each state government is the decision maker regarding the lottery status on its borders. 

Some states allow lotteries and even organize them such as Kerala and Punjab, while others strictly prohibit them like Odisha and Bihar.

The above status of legality regards mainly to physical lottery with paper tickets, but the status of online lottery is another matter on each state. In many Indian states the legal status of online lottery is in the “grey area”, not legal but also not illegal.

🟢 Regarding state government lotteries (paper tickets), 13 states has their own legistlation permitting state lotteries and hold organized lotteries.

Those states are:

🟠 In those states it is legal to play the state lottery physically with paper tickets, but you can’t buy the tickets for those organized lotteries online!

🟢 Regarding online lottery, in most of those states there are no rules against playing the lottery online. This means players on these states can mainly play on online lottery sites safely and without breaking any law.

🟠 It does, however, depends on if the specific state has it own rules against online lottery. Most of those 13 states have no rules against it, but there are exceptions such as Punjab for example. 

Therefore we encourage you to check the specific state situation before making your decision to play online lottery.

However, if you want to play the lottery online from those states you have to make sure you only play on offshore online lottery sites that offer payment methods suited for Indian players. We got you though, all the sites we recommend on Jackpotking follow these two terms. 

⚠ You also have to make sure you are not breaking any relevant law of the specific state you are in as there are exceptions such as Punjab. We have created a state specific pages for states that need special guidance, you can find the links to those pages on the 13 states table above, in the states with yellow background.

To sum up, if you are from the 13 states above:

✅ It is safe for you to play on online lottery sites in almost all of those states, but they have to be offshore sites that offer Indian payment methods. However, we recommend you to check the online lottery approach to the specific state before you choose to play the lottery online.

✅ You can play state government lotteries physically on the lotteries that are approved by your state.

❌ You can’t play the state government lotteries on your states online, it’s illegal.

The top online lottery websites on this page follow the two terms above and are mainly safe for you to play if you are from the states above, check them out.

❌ Regarding physical lotteries (paper tickets), the other 15 states of India have laws and regulations that ban physical lotteries.

✅ However, those rules don’t apply to online lottery in most of those states and you can generally play the lottery online from those states without worry. We advise you to still pay attention to the specific law of the state you are playing from, because some of the states ban online lottery too.

Those 15 states are:

🟠 In those 15 states it is illegal to play state lottery physically with paper tickets, and there are no state organized lotteries. We also recommend on avoiding fake sites that try to sell physical lottery tickets online, stick to offshore international sites. Trying to play physical, paper tickets lottery on those states is at your own risk.

🟢 However, the situation of online lottery on those 15 states is different. Those states mainly don’t have rules and regulations against online lottery. Therefore, it’s generally ok to play the lottery online if the state doesn’t has specific rules against online lottery and also follows the   the same two conditions from the previous section:

1️⃣ The online lottery site you choose has to be an offshore site (Headquarters outside of India).

2️⃣ The site you choose has to offer payment methods that are compatible with players from India.

Important to know:

🔼 If you stick to those two terms, you can generally play online lottery from your state without fear of breaking any law or being persecuted.

No player has been arrested, punished or persecuted for playing the lottery online in whole of India, including the 15 states above. 

Playing online lottery in a state that directly bans it, however, is under your reponsibility only and at your own risk.

To sum it up, if you are from the 15 states above:

✅ It is mostly safe for you to play on online lottery sites in most of those states, but the sites you choose have to be offshore sites that offer payment methods that are compatible for Indian players. Check the specific state regarding its approach of online lottery, playing it from a state that forbids it is under your responsibility only.

❌ You can’t play lotteries physically on those states, be it states or private lotteries – It’s illegal.

The online lottery sites we list on this page and on this whole sites all follow these terms above, check them out. They are safe for you to play if you are from the states above.

✅ International online lottery draws such as Mega Millions, Euro Millions, Powerball and others are mainly legal, you are not breaking any law when you play on these draws. However, it’s only legal if you are playing through a top international lottery site (See next sub-section for more information regarding this).

❌ It’s not legal to play the Indian state lotteries online, it’s only legal to play them physically from the 13 states that allow lotteries. 

✅ It’s only permitted in the 13 states above and only by buying the tickets physically from authorized resellers. 

⛔ Physical lottery is banned in the other 15 states mentioned above.

⛔ It is not legal to play government lottery online from all of India’s states. please know that if you choose to do this you’re doing it at your own risk and responsibility and are breaking the law. You can only play government lottery physically from on the permitted states.

✅ You can play the lottery online from all of India’s states without worrying as it’s not illegal, but the lottery sites you choose has to be offshore sites that offer Indian suitable payment methods. Those sites have to offer international lottery draws only.

🟠 State lotteries are a big thing in India, but they are strictly a physical experience, it’s illegal to buy goverment lottery tickets online.

🟠 Kerala was the first state to launch and allow government lotteries in the 60s, and has the biggest lotteries in the country with the biggest jackpots. 

🟠 Every state has its own draws, and some states operate private companies to run the lotteries with the approval of the state.

🟠 There are weekly draws, monthly draws even yearly draws (Called also bumper draws), and the variety and number of draws is different for each state.

🟠 The jackpot sums also vary between the types of draws and between each state.

🟠 Government draws are local only, there are no available international draws via the goverment lotteries.

🔔 Before you choose to go with either online lottery sites or goverment lottery, we highly recommend you to check our government lottery in India page for more information on the state run lotteries (Government lotteries in India).

🔐  More secure and reliable

You can’t lose your ticket if you bought it online, and the sites we recommend here are top of the industry regarding reliability and security.

Here at Jackpotking we are only talking about top licensed lottery websites that pay their winners every day and week. Those sites are also encrypted and secure to keep your personal and financial data safe. In short, you can’t lose your ticket with those top sites, your data is safe with them and if you win, you will get your money!

🌐  Wider scope of draws

A top lottery site offers you a very wide selection of draws to choose from. From world renown lottery draws like Mega Millions, PowerBall and Euro Millions to more niche and localized draws like ElGordo, CASH4LIFE and France loto – These sites have them all and many, many more draws.

This means that instead of choosing only one lottery provider or sticking only to local lottery, on these sites you can get access to purchase tickets for top lottery draws from all around the world from the comfort of your laptop or mobile phone.

💵  Big selection of payment methods

Buying lottery tickets online from a top side opens you to a wide variety of payment methods for your comfort. You can pay with e-wallets, bank transfers and even crypto!

The real top sites even offer you the chance the use India’s favorite methods such as UPI, Paytm, PhonePe, Google-Pay and many others.

The selection of ways to deposit and withdraw your money on those online sites is much bigger and basically gives you much more options to choose from than when buying physical lottery tickets.

🪙  Enjoy special prices and promotions

While the prices are mainly the same when buying lottery tickets physically, the sitation is totally different when booking a lottery ticket online.

There is an array of different and specific prices for each draw and there are tons of discounts and promotions to choose from, which gives you the option to also choose by price and of course, pick discounts and promos to help you cut costs.

To sum up, when it comes to ticket prices, it’s much more flexible when booking a ticket online.

📜  Mainly legal and safe in almost all of India

While physical lottery might be banned in many Indian states, buying online lottery tickets is in the grey area for most states.

This basically means that online lottery is not illegal in almost all Indian states as long as the site is offshore and offers legit payment methods for Indian players.

Therefore you are legally allowed to book you lottery tickets online from basically all Indian states apart from West Bengal.

📱  Much more comfortable

When it comes to comfort, buying lottery tickets online beats physically buying paper tickets any time. It’s much easier to book you tickets with an online site via your laptop, home desktop or mobile phone from the comfort of wherever you choose to be. 

Almost all the top lottery sites are mobile friendly and offer a fantastic mobile experience and this brings great versatility to you, you can book your tickets from your mobile for top draws from basically anywhere.

Therefore, the flexibility and comfort of buying the tickets online is a huge advantage contrary to buying lottery paper tickets physically.

🔎  Full access to results from all the draws in one place

Booking tickets from a lottery sites offer you a one go-to place to go and check the results for all the draws.

This comes very handy if you bought tickets for different draws and you can basically buy the tickets for all those draws and check the results for them all at the same place. Very comfortable!

🎰  Many more options to play

While lottery is king for top online lottery sites, many of those sites offer other kinds of games and options to play on apart from lottery. 

Those options include Keno games, casino games and even sports betting and the variety of those extra games depends on each lottery sites.

For example, Lotto247 offers a variety of Keno and casino games apart from its world class selection of lotteries.

This variety of games doesn’t exist when buying lottery tickets physically so it’s a big advantage to buying them online.