State of the Clawcade 2026
We counted every claw-machine arcade we could find in the US, mapped them against the Census, and read 120,000 player reviews. Here's what we found.
The short version
- 335 dedicated clawcades operate in the US. An industry estimate cited by the Wall Street Journal in August put the number at 300 to 400. Our count lands inside that range.
- At least 1 in 5 opened since the start of 2024.
- Texas is the claw capital: 73 clawcades, 22% of the national total, in a state with about 9% of Americans.
- Las Vegas has the most per person: 9.6 clawcades per million residents.
- Players call chain arcades rigged far more often. Among reviews that mention claw machines, 21% at big arcade chains use words like "rigged" or "scam", against 12% at dedicated clawcades.
Where the clawcades are
Houston has the most clawcades of any metro area. Las Vegas has the most for its size.
| Rank | Metro area | Clawcades |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Houston | 28 |
| 2 | Las Vegas | 23 |
| 3 | Los Angeles | 19 |
| 4 | Dallas-Fort Worth | 17 |
| 5 | New York | 14 |
| 6 | San Antonio | 10 |
| 7 | Minneapolis-St. Paul | 9 |
| 8 | Phoenix, San Francisco-Oakland, Atlanta, Denver (tie) | 8 |
| Rank | Metro area | Clawcades per million residents |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Las Vegas | 9.6 |
| 2 | Fort Wayne, Ind. | 6.5 |
| 3 | San Antonio | 3.6 |
| 4 | Houston | 3.6 |
| 5 | Baton Rouge | 3.4 |
| 6 | Honolulu | 3.0 |
| 7 | Rochester, N.Y. | 2.8 |
| 8 | Tucson | 2.8 |
| 9 | Austin | 2.7 |
| 10 | Denver | 2.6 |
Per-person rankings include metro areas with at least three clawcades.
Texas is the claw capital
Texas has 73 clawcades, more than any other state and well ahead of California's 52. Four Texas metros rank in the national top ten by count or per person: Houston (28, first in the country), Dallas-Fort Worth (17, fourth), San Antonio (10, third per person) and Austin (7, ninth per person).
The boom
At least 72 of the 335 clawcades got their first Google review in 2024 or later: 12 in 2024, 30 in 2025, and 30 so far in 2026. That is a floor. Busier shops have too many reviews for us to see where their history starts, so the true number is higher.
Los Angeles added the most new clawcades since 2024 (at least 7), followed by Houston (4), Dallas-Fort Worth, San Francisco-Oakland and Riverside-San Bernardino (3 each).
What 120,000 reviews say
Chains get called rigged more. Among reviews that talk about claw machines, 21% at Round1, Dave & Buster's, Main Event and Chuck E. Cheese use words like "rigged", "scam" or "rip-off". At dedicated clawcades it is 12%. Reviews saying a machine was easy to win, or that they actually won, run 5.8% at clawcades against 3.3% at the chains.
The trade-in economy. At more than half of clawcades, reviewers mention trading plushies in, or up, for bigger prizes. It fits what operators told the Wall Street Journal: they want players to win.
Labubu mania peaked in summer 2025. In the spring and summer of 2025, about 1 in 30 clawcade reviews mentioned Labubu. By this summer it was fewer than 1 in 400.
What people spend. Reviewers who mention a number most often say they spent about $40, and a typical play costs around $2. These come from reviewers who chose to mention money, so read them as a snapshot rather than an average.
The weirdest prizes we found
- A toilet paper claw machine at Claw Zone in Louisville, Ky.
- A claw game where you grab a money bag at Rockin' Raceway Arcade in Pigeon Forge, Tenn.
- $150 mystery packs, from which one player pulled a graded, perfect-10 Pikachu card, at OdysseyVR Hawaii in Honolulu
- Graded Pokémon cards at Claw Mania Kingdom in Houston
- A PlayStation 5 won from a machine at Extravaganza in Wilmington, N.C., and at Diversions Game Room in San Antonio
- A Nintendo Switch Lite won at Fun-N-Games in Moneta, Va.
- Savannah Bananas and Michael Jordan jerseys won at Playcade Arcade in Atlantic City
- Machines stocked entirely with rubber ducks, and others with Sonny Angel figures, in shops from Dallas to King of Prussia, Pa.
How we counted
We started from the Claw Machine Buddy directory of 430 US venues with claw machines. A venue counts as a clawcade if its name or Google category marks it as a claw or prize shop, or if at least 20% of its written Google reviews mention claw machines, cranes or plush prizes. The other 95 are arcades where claw machines are a sideline.
We placed each venue in a metro area using Census Bureau boundaries and 2024 population estimates. Opening dates are estimated from each venue's earliest Google review. Review findings come from 18,934 reviews of the 430 venues and 100,427 reviews of 2,126 other arcades and chains, collected in September 2026, and are based on keywords.
All counts are a floor: they include the venues we have found so far. Know a clawcade we missed? Add it.
Use this data
The rankings are free to use with credit to Claw Machine Buddy and a link to this page. Download the data (CSV). Press questions: Erin Covert, ecovert@lumingolabs.com.