Is the Premium Bonds prize fund rate the same as the return I'll get?

No. The prize fund rate is a mathematical mean across every bondholder, pulled upward by extremely rare prizes like the two £1 million jackpots paid each month. Most individual holders, especially with smaller balances, receive less than the headline rate in a typical year.

What is the median Premium Bonds return?

The median is the return a holder in the middle of the distribution actually receives, a more realistic figure than the mean for most people. It runs meaningfully below the headline rate, particularly for smaller holdings. NS&I doesn't publish a median directly; MoneySavingExpert's Premium Bonds calculator models the full prize distribution to estimate it.

Why is the average Premium Bonds return higher than what most people win?

Because prize values are extremely skewed: the vast majority of prizes are £25, £50 or £100, while a tiny number are worth £5,000 to £1 million. A handful of huge prizes pull the mathematical average well above what a typical holder experiences.

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Premium Bonds
Draw Tracker

Published 24 August 2026

Is the 4.35% rate the return you'll actually get?

Short answer: almost certainly not. Here's what NS&I's own published numbers actually show, and a simulator so you can see a realistic year for your own holding, not just the average.

What the "prize fund rate" really is

NS&I's 4.35% isn't an interest rate in the way a savings account's is. It's a mathematical mean: NS&I takes the total value of prizes it plans to pay out, divides it by the total value of bonds in the system, and calls that the "prize fund rate." That number describes the whole pool. It says almost nothing about what any individual holder will get, because prize values are wildly uneven.

The real prize breakdown

Here's NS&I's own published allocation for the August 2026 draw, the actual numbers, not an estimate:

Prize value	Number of prizes	Share of all prizes

Look at the bottom two rows: over 4.2 million of the 6.2 million prizes that month, more than two-thirds, were worth just £25 or £50. Meanwhile, two single prizes were worth £1 million each. Those two jackpots alone account for roughly 0.46% of the entire month's prize value, despite being 0.00003% of the prizes. That's the skew in a nutshell: a vanishingly small number of enormous prizes pull the average a long way above what the overwhelming majority of prizes, and holders, actually see.

Mean vs median, in one sentence: the mean is "total prizes ÷ total holders," pulled upward by rare jackpots. The median is "what the middle holder gets," a far more realistic picture of a typical year, and it sits meaningfully below the mean, especially for smaller holdings.

Simulate your last 12 months

This runs a proper simulation using NS&I's own real prize-tier proportions (the table above) and the actual prize fund rate and odds that applied each month over the last year, not the current 4.35% held constant, since it's only been in effect since September 2026.

Your holding £5,000

Total won over 12 simulated months £0

Equivalent to 0.00% for the year

This is one random outcome, generated fresh using real odds. Press the button again and you'll very likely get a different result, because that's exactly how the actual monthly draws work for everyone.

What this means in practice

Small holdings: a £0 year is genuinely common, not unlucky in any unusual sense. Try simulating £1,000 a few times.
Larger holdings: results still swing a lot, but average out closer to the headline rate over time, simply because more bonds mean more independent chances each month.
For an exact median estimate rather than a simulation, MoneySavingExpert's Premium Bonds calculator models the full distribution mathematically rather than by random sampling.

Back to the full tracker See NS&I's source table