Mining · Buyer's guide
The best lottery miners in 2026, ranked from my own bench outward
Updated 19 July 2026 · about a 10 minute read
I run Avalon Mini 3s at home, and from November to March they're the nicest heaters in the house - 800 watts of warmth that also happens to hash at 37.5 TH/s. They will almost certainly never win a block - I'll show you the maths - and I'd buy them again tomorrow. That's the strange economics of lottery mining, and once you accept it, picking the right miner gets much simpler: you're choosing a ticket price, a noise level, and a heat output, not an investment.
Every unit here points real SHA-256 hashrate at a solo pool, where a win pays the whole block reward - a shade over 3 BTC with fees. The odds below are computed against the real network hashrate (930 EH/s at the time of writing).
The odds
One expected block per year needs about 17,700 TH/s at today's difficulty. Your Bitaxe has 1.2. So the table below reads "1 in ~14,700" as: in any given year, that's your chance of hitting a block. Run it a decade and you've had roughly ten tickets. Someone, somewhere, does win - solo.ckpool has paid out to sub-10 TH miners more than once - but it's a raffle where the ticket also happens to be a lovely piece of hardware.
| Miner | Hashrate | Power | ~Price | Block odds / year | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitaxe Gamma | 1.2 TH/s | 18W | £79 | 1 in ~14,700 | Best first lottery miner |
| Avalon Nano 3S | 6 TH/s | 140W | £230 | 1 in ~2,950 | Best odds per pound on a desk |
| Avalon Nano 3 | 4 TH/s | 140W | £165 | 1 in ~4,400 | Best desk heater that mines |
| Avalon Mini 3 | 37.5 TH/s | 800W | £720 | 1 in ~470 | The heater-miner I run |
| Zyber 8S | 6.4 TH/s | 140W | £210 | 1 in ~2,750 | Open firmware, best odds per pound (my fleet runs on these) |
| NerdQaxe++ | 4.8 TH/s | 76W | £450 | 1 in ~3,700 | Best quiet multi-chip Bitaxe |
| FutureBit Apollo II | 6 TH/s | 175W | £650 | 1 in ~2,950 | Best if you want a full node too |
| Bitaxe Touch | 2.15 TH/s | 43W | £199 | 1 in ~8,200 | The one for the shelf |
| Lucky Miner LV07 | 1 TH/s | 25W | £105 | 1 in ~17,700 | Budget alternative |
| NerdMiner V2 | 78 KH/s | 1W | £25 | 1 in ~230 million | A lovely gift, not a miner |
| Avalon Q | 90 TH/s | 1674W | £1650 | 1 in ~197 | When the lottery gets serious |
Bitaxe Gamma - start here
If this is your first lottery miner, it's the Bitaxe Gamma and it isn't close. About £79 buys 1.2 TH/s at 18 watts, on open-source hardware running open firmware (AxeOS) you can tune yourself. It's the cheapest way to point real ASIC hashrate at your own node, the community around it is the best in home mining, and 18 watts is background noise on any electricity bill. My setup guide gets one hashing in fifteen minutes.
Avalon Nano 3S - the desk-scale Avalon
The Nano 3S is the little sibling of the Mini 3 I run, and it's the best pound-per-terahash deal at desk scale: 6 TH/s for about £230, five times the Gamma's odds for three times the money. It's a proper Canaan ASIC in a desk-friendly aluminium shell, quiet in its low mode, and set-up is app-driven rather than tinker-driven. What you give up against a Bitaxe is the open firmware and the community. What you get is odds.
Avalon Nano 3 - the desk heater
The older Nano 3 runs 4 TH/s from the same 140-watt envelope, and Canaan leaned into the obvious: it has an actual heater mode that ducts its warmth at you. 140 watts of ASIC warmth pointed at your hands is a pleasant way to hold a lottery ticket, and it's the cheapest Avalon at about £165. In summer it's a slightly noisy paperweight - and if the heater idea is the part that appeals, the Mini 3 below is the version I actually chose.
Zyber 8S - what my fleet runs on
The open-frame units in the photos above are TinyChipHub Zyber 8S miners, and they're the value play of the open-firmware world: eight Bitaxe-class chips on AxeOS, 6.4 TH/s for about $269 - more hashrate than a NerdQaxe++ for less money, with the same tuning culture. The trade is the badge: it's a small shop's house brand, so you're trusting their build rather than a big name's. Several of mine have been earning that trust for a while now. Full review on the hub page, spare parts from the same shop, and no affiliate relationship - I just run them.
NerdQaxe++ - the quiet one
The NerdQaxe++ is what happens when the Bitaxe idea grows up: four BM1370s on one board, 4.8 TH/s at 76 watts, still open-source, still AxeOS. It's the pick if you want near-Nano odds while keeping the open firmware and the tuning culture - and it runs quieter than either Avalon. At ~£450 you're paying a premium for that openness.
FutureBit Apollo II - miner plus node
The Apollo II bundles 6 TH/s (in eco mode, 175W) with a full Bitcoin node in one quiet box. Solo mining against your own node is the whole point of the lottery for some people - it's the most sovereign version of this hobby - and the Apollo is the tidiest way to do it. £650 is real money, but you're buying two devices, and it's the one machine here I'd call furniture-grade quiet.
The Touch, the Lucky Miner, and the NerdMiner
The Bitaxe Touch is the Gamma's odds doubled with a colour touchscreen - the one you buy because it looks brilliant on a shelf, at shelf-ornament pricing. The Lucky Miner LV07 undercuts everything at ~£105 for 1 TH/s if you just want cheap hash and don't mind closed firmware from a no-name brand. And the NerdMiner V2 - 78 kilohash on an ESP32 - will win a block roughly once per 230 million years. It's not a miner, it's a £25 conversation piece with a live Bitcoin ticker, and as a gift for a curious friend it's perfect.
When the lottery gets serious: Mini 3 and Avalon Q
Past the desk units sit the heater-miners, and this is where my own money went. The Avalon Mini 3 is 37.5 TH/s at 800 watts (21.3 J/TH, ~45dB), and the whole point is that those 800 watts arrive as room heat with a proper heater mode. From November to March mine do the winter heating: the room's warm, the odds are 1-in-~470 a year rather than 1-in-thousands, and the electricity was going on heating anyway - that last part is the entire economic argument. Street price is around $950/£720. The full Mini 3 review page has the modes, the specs and where to buy. In summer, like any 800-watt heater, it goes off.
Above it sits the Avalon Q: 90 TH/s, 1,674 watts, odds of roughly 1-in-197 a year - a real number at last. It's also £1,650, sounds like a home appliance because it is one, and at UK electricity prices it burns about £4 of power a day if you're not using the heat. Same rule at double scale: buy it as a heater that plays the lottery, or don't buy it.
The verdict
First miner: the Bitaxe Gamma, no hesitation. Best odds for sensible money at desk scale: the Avalon Nano 3S. A cold house and mains headroom: the Avalon Mini 3 - it's what I run, and winter is when the whole idea makes sense. Node-and-miner sovereignty: the Apollo II. And whatever you pick, read the profitability piece first so you're buying with clear eyes: none of these will pay for themselves unless you win, and you almost certainly won't.