Claw Machine: How It Works, Odds and Payouts

Claw Machine is a prize-pit game with one grab per round. You pick a small, big or giant prize, the claw descends, and it either misses the prize, picks it up and slips at the chute, grabs it, or on a lucky grab picks up two at once. Bigger prizes pay more and are harder to grab.

Coins are virtual and have no cash value. The outcome is drawn on our servers when you tap Grab; the claw animation is the reveal.

How a round works

1. Set your bet and choose the prize you want to go for: small, big or giant.
2. Press Grab. One outcome is drawn from the table for that prize.
3. A miss loses the bet. A slip pays a small consolation. A grab pays the prize's multiplier. A double grab pays twice that.

There is nothing to cash out part of the way through: the single grab settles the round.

Odds and payouts for each prize

Slips and double grabs have the same chance for every prize (15% and 1.5%). What changes is how often the claw grabs the prize cleanly and how much the prize is worth. The three tables return a little under 97%, and the exact figures are in the last row. The shared limits for all games are on the odds page.

How often do you get something back?

The giant prize pays something on fewer than one grab in five, and more than your bet on fewer than one in thirty. A slip is a partial loss: you lose 70% of the stake on a small or big prize and 50% on the giant.

A worked example

You aim for the big prize with a 100-coin bet. The claw grabs it 17.55% of the time, paying 4.5x, which is 450 coins. It double-grabs 1.5% of the time for 900 coins, slips 15% of the time for 30 coins, and misses 65.95% of the time for nothing. Weighted by those chances: 0.1755 x 450 + 0.015 x 900 + 0.15 x 30 = 78.98 + 13.5 + 4.5 = 96.98 coins per 100 stake. About two grabs in three return nothing at all.

Max win and caps

The largest Claw Machine payout is 40x the bet, a double grab of the giant prize, which happens 1.5% of the time. That is far below the game-wide limits of 50,000x the bet and 250,000,000 coins per round.

What is the same as other prize games

Claw Machine is a one-shot draw like High Striker: How It Works, Odds and Payouts, with a fixed table of outcomes and no skill in the claw. Ring Toss: How It Works, Odds and Payouts is another carnival game that works from published tables. For the wider question of whether a game's odds are fair, see Are Casino Games Rigged? How to Tell and What to Check.

Tips that hold up

• The prize size is the only choice. Small is steady and giant is a long shot, but all return about 97%.
• Do not time the grab. The claw's position when you press has no effect on the outcome.
• A near miss is not a pattern. A claw that appears to graze the prize and miss is the animation for an outcome that was already drawn.
• Giant is a lottery ticket. More than four rounds in five pay nothing.

Play with limits

A one-button game makes it easy to repeat quickly. Set a coin and time limit before you start, and see Play Safely in Cashout Arcade: Limits and Breaks for tools. Cashout Arcade is for adults aged 18+, uses virtual coins and has no real-money prizes.