A dozen Premium Bonds holders with less than £1,000 win big in July

The lucky dozen! How 12 Premium Bonds holders with pots of £1,000 or less won prizes between £10,000 and £100,000 in the latest draw

  • The number of £100,000 prizes will rise to 77 in August this year, up from 10 a year ago
  • The total number of prizes worth £10,000 – £100,000 increased from 167 to 1,308
  • In this month’s draw, 12 people won big with holdings of just £1k or less

Holders of Premium Bonds may have noticed that their chances of winning a top prize have increased dramatically over the last 12 months.

While there are still only two £1 million prizes per month, there are now almost seven times as many prizes worth between £10,000 and £100,000 as there were at this time last year.

There are an estimated 77 prizes worth £100,000 in the August draw. That’s more than just 10 awards of this value last year at this time.

Better odds: Overall, the number of prizes between £10,000 and £100,000 will have increased from 167 in July 2022 to an estimated 1,308 prizes in August this year.

There will be 154 prizes worth £50,000 and 308 prizes worth £25,000 in August, compared to just 19 and 40 respectively in July last year.

The number of £10,000 prizes has also skyrocketed from last year. There will be 769 £10,000 prizes awarded next month. Last July there were only 98.

Overall, the number of prizes between £10,000 and £100,000 will have increased from 167 in July 2022 to an estimated 1,308 prizes in August this year.

That is almost seven times more prices. Over the same period, the number of eligible bonds in the drawing has only increased from 118.6 billion to 121.5 billion.

While prizes worth between £50 and £5,000 are also up this time last year, the number of £25 prizes has been reduced from 4.75 million a year ago to an estimated 1.7 million in the August draw this year.

Premium Bonds price numbers
Value of prizesNumber of awards in July 2022Number of awards in July 2023Number of awards in August 2023 (estimated)
£1,000,000222
£100,000107177
£50,00019142154
£25,00040283308
£10,00098709769
£5,0001971,4181,539
£1,0002,76714,98116,194
£5008.30144,94348,582
£10037,9621,746,6221,875,589
£5037,9621,746,6221,875,589
£254,752,5311,505,5561,701,995

The smallest companies can also gain a lot

Over 5 million prizes worth nearly £375 million will be awarded in this month’s prize draw.

Six of the winners who won a prize between £25,000 and £100,000 had £1,000 worth of Premium Bonds or less.

The luckiest of these was an East Sussex winner who won the £100,000 prize with just £300 worth of Premium Bonds in his account – a return of 33,233 per cent.

In total there were 71 prizes worth £100,000, 142 prizes worth £50,000 and 283 prizes worth £25,000, making a total of 498 prizes.

This means that 1.2 per cent of the big winners had £1,000 worth of Premium Bonds or less.

Six other people with £1,000 less in assets were lucky enough to win the £10,000 prize this month, of which there are now 709 prizes.

With Premium Bonds prize fund rates rising from 3.7 per cent to 4 per cent in next month’s draw and the number of top prizes rising as a result, many Brits with smaller holdings will have even more reason to check out the prize draw.

The lucky dozen who bet small and won big in July
Price valueWinning bond numberTotal value of holdingsPlaceDate they purchased the winning bond
£100,000117HB416722£300East SussexOct-06
£100,000127MW685934£500Outside LondonApril-07
£100,000102LW635263£1,000LeicesterOct-05
£25,000240AN945527£500Northern IrelandJanuary 15
£25,00030SB521959£205Northern IrelandJune-92
£25,000182NH718384£913knowsJuly 11
£10,00045XL942050£100South West WalesDec-00
£10,000179EW933490£600Essex11 March
£10,000470FX226188£1,000Devon21st of September
£10,000415TS600988£825OverseasOct 20
£10,00033SZ432411£100HertfordshireJune-93
£10,000506EB981228£250knowsJuly 22