Sweepstakes contests offer the opportunity to dream about life-changing amounts of money. The premise is simple – submit an entry and wait for the Publishers Clearing House “Prize Patrol” to show up at your house.
Or (as in the case of the Starbucks for Life contest or the infamous McDonald’s Monopoly game), purchase items and try to uncover that rare game piece that grants you a big prize.
While the odds of nabbing millions of dollars in a sweepstakes are long, you can’t win if you don’t try. Here are the five biggest sweepstakes contests in the US that you can enter every year, which includes instructions on how to enter:
5. TLC Sweepstakes
TLC is a TV network that exists as a sister brand to HGTV and The Food Network and offers sweepstakes contests throughout the year,
While the prizes awarded in TLC’s sweepstakes don’t quite stack up to the HGTV Dream Home Giveaway, the consistency of the contests earns a place on our list. The prizes awarded in the contests generally range from $5,000 to $10,000.
Those might not be life-changing sums, but you get many, many chances to win throughout the year. The current TLC sweepstakes, called the Holiday Central $5K Giveaway, runs through January 9, 2025.
You can enter the contest by visiting the TLC website or the Discovery website and navigating to the “Sweepstakes” link at either. The contest rules limit players to one entry per day.
The odds of winning the Holiday Central $5K Giveaway depend on the number of entrants, and TLC doesn’t really provide much more than that in terms of estimated odds. Good news though – you’ll find TLC contests running virtually year-round.
4. Starbucks For Life Sweepstakes
Does a lifetime supply of Starbucks coffee sound good to you? If so, then it’s time to get your entries in for the Starbucks for Life sweepstakes contest.
The grand prize of this contest is “Starbucks for Life,” which translates to one free standard menu beverage or food item per day for 30 years. Starbucks estimates the value of this grand prize at $70,518.
This contest is not a winner-take-all sweepstakes, as up to five grand prizes will be awarded. Lots of other prizes are up for grabs as well, including a $1,000 Delta gift card, a $500 Marriott Bonvoy gift card, and Starbucks Rewards stars.
The Starbucks for Life contest tasks players with collecting game pieces, which you get by purchasing items at Starbucks. You can also enter the sweepstakes without making a purchase by visiting the Starbucks for Life website.
This contest runs yearly through January 5, 2025. This sweepstakes will award more than 10 million prizes total, and while Starbucks doesn’t provide the exact chances of winning the grand prize, you can rest assured that the five big winners will be on the good end of some very unlikely odds.
3. Microsoft Rewards Presents: A Million Dollar Sweepstakes
We have good news and bad news regarding the Microsoft Rewards Presents: A Million Dollar Sweepstakes.
The good news – this is a real, legitimate sweepstakes contest with a $1 million grand prize on the line. The bad news – the deadline for entry is 11:59 pm Pacific Time on December 31, 2024, and that deadline is rapidly approaching.
This contest provides a couple of different ways to enter. The easiest way to get into the contest is by visiting the sweepstakes website’s home page, clicking the “claim your free entry” button and providing the requested details from there.
You can also submit five entries by redeeming 2,000 Microsoft Rewards points. Additionally, you can enter by mail by following the instructions located within the Official Rules of the contest (you can find a link to these rules near the bottom of the sweepstakes site homepage).
In addition to the million-dollar grand prize, this contest will also award 10 secondary prizes of $10,000 each. Two $10,000 prizes will go out in each of five jurisdictions (United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany).
Microsoft states that the odds of winning the grand prize depend on the total number of entries for the contest. Keeping in mind that this sweepstakes isn’t just limited to the U.S., you can safely guess that those odds are astronomical.
2. Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes
The legendary Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes is perhaps the most famous sweepstakes contest in the U.S.
This contest began in 1967, and you’ve very likely seen the commercials where the PCH “Prize Patrol” shows up at a winner’s house, giant seven-figure check in hand. The biggest prizes in the PCH Sweepstakes have included a $10 million prize and a “$5,000 a week for life” prize.
The Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes is still going strong, and you still have a few weeks to get your entry in for the current edition of the contest. The current contest (aka “Giveaway No. 19990”) will award a grand prize of $1,250,000.
Unlike some of the other contests on our list, PCH provides the exact odds of winning the $1.25 million prize. If you want to claim this grand prize, you have a 1 in 6,750,000,000 chance of winning.
You can enter this long-running contest by visiting the PCH Sweepstakes website and filling out the entry form. You can submit one entry per day, and the deadline to enter is midnight on Feb. 26, 2025.
1. HGTV Dream Home Giveaway
The aptly named HGTV Dream Home Giveaway functions as an annual sweepstakes contest that awards a “dream home” as the grand prize. The location of the dream home changes from year to year, and the house itself is usually worth seven figures.
The winner of the 2025 HGTV Dream Home Giveaway gets a grand prize package that’s worth more than $2.2 million.
This year’s dream home is located in the countryside of Bluffton, South Carolina. The three-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bathroom home spans more than 3,000 square feet and is described by interior designer Brian Patrick Flynn as “the perfect blend of Lowcountry elegance and modern comfort.”
HGTV began running this sweepstakes in 1997, and it’s become one of the most popular contests in the U.S. The 2025 edition of the Dream Home Giveaway began on Dec. 17, 2024, and runs through February 14, 2025.
You can submit up to two entries daily for the contest; one per day on the HGTV website and one per day on the Food Network website. The chances of winning the grand prize depend on how many total entries are submitted, but we estimate that the eventual winner will have to beat odds of around 150,000,000-to-1.
The grand prize package also includes $100,000 cash, a 2025 Mercedes Benz GLC, and a five-year supply of Vida paper towels.
The contest winner can also opt to take a $750,000 cash prize instead of the house.