Overview
Stardust is the universal currency used to strengthen, customize, and trade Pokémon in Pokémon GO. Unlike Candy, which belongs to a single species family, Stardust goes into one shared pool across your entire collection. Catching Pokémon, hatching Eggs, battling, and completing daily activities all feed this same balance, which pays for power-ups, second Charged Attacks, trades, purification, form changes, and Adventure Effects.
Because every project draws from the same reserve, spending heavily on one Pokémon directly reduces what you have on hand for an upcoming trade or battle team.
How to get it
Catch Pokémon, hatch Eggs, win Raid Battles and Trainer Battles, feed Berries to Gym defenders, and claim Field, Timed, or Special Research rewards.
Earn additional payouts from GO Battle League sets and seasonal rewards, Team GO Rocket battles, opening Gifts, completing Routes, PokéStop Showcases, Party Play, and weekly Adventure Sync milestones.
How to use it
Check the exact Stardust and Candy cost displayed on the confirmation prompt before powering up, unlocking a second Charged Attack, purifying, changing forms, or trading.
Power-up costs climb steeply with Pokémon level—taking a standard Pokémon from Level 1 to Level 50 requires 520,000 Stardust—so plan high-level builds around your available reserve.
Worth knowing
Activate a Star Piece to multiply eligible Stardust earnings by 1.5× for 30 minutes, and time it with catch-bonus events, Egg hatches, or GO Battle League reward claims.
Choose the Pokémon, moves, and intended league before powering up. Extra CP can make a Pokémon ineligible for a league with a CP limit.
Separate earning more from spending less
Stardust acts as a shared bottleneck because nearly every roster upgrade draws from the same balance. Powering up a raid counter, unlocking a second Charged Attack for GO Battle League, purifying a Shadow Pokémon, changing a Pokémon's form, activating an Adventure Effect, or completing a special trade all compete for the exact same Stardust.
When you are farming Stardust, remember that a wild Pokémon's level and CP do not increase the amount of Stardust you earn for catching it. Instead, catch payouts are determined by the Pokémon's evolutionary stage, species-specific bonuses, weather boost, and active event or item multipliers.
An easy-to-catch base-stage species with a natural bonus—such as Paras, Meowth, or Shroomish at 500 Stardust, Shellder or Chimecho at 1,000, or Audino at 2,100—yields far more Stardust for your Poké Balls than a high-CP wild Pokémon with a standard 100-Stardust payout.
Before committing to a full build, add up the power-up cost and the second Charged Attack cost separately, because cost modifiers do not apply equally to both actions. A Lucky Pokémon cuts power-up Stardust by 50%, but its second Charged Attack still costs the normal rate.
By contrast, Shadow Pokémon pay a 20% surcharge (1.2×) on both power-ups and second Charged Attacks, while Purified Pokémon receive a 10% discount (0.9×) on power-ups and a 20% discount (0.8×) on unlocking a second Charged Attack.
A comparison of power-up discounts
The table below shows how each status modifier changes a single power-up step that would normally cost 10,000 Stardust at the same Pokémon level. For a single step, the adjusted Stardust cost is:
Cost = Base × m_status
Here, Base is the standard power-up Stardust cost for that half-level step (10,000 Stardust in this baseline example), and m_status is the status modifier: 1.0 for an ordinary Pokémon, 1.2 for a Shadow Pokémon (+20% surcharge), 0.9 for a Purified Pokémon (10% discount), and 0.5 for a Lucky Pokémon (50% discount).
When a Purified Pokémon is traded and becomes a Lucky Pokémon, the Purified and Lucky modifiers multiply together (0.9 × 0.5 = 0.45), reducing the 10,000-Stardust step to 4,500 Stardust (a 55% total discount). Across a multi-level power-up quote, the game applies these modifiers and rounds at each individual half-level step.
Purifying a Shadow Pokémon permanently alters its combat performance alongside its upgrade costs. Shadow Pokémon deal 20% more damage with their Fast and Charged Attacks in exchange for taking roughly 20% more damage. Because that extra damage output is prized in raids and certain GO Battle League matchups, a lower Stardust bill alone is rarely a good reason to purify a strong Shadow attacker.
| Status | Illustrative cost |
|---|---|
| Ordinary | 10,000 |
| Shadow | 12,000 |
| Purified | 9,000 |
| Lucky | 5,000 |
| Lucky and Purified | 4,500 |
Costs, discounts, and reward boosts
Standard half-level power-up steps start at 200 Stardust (from Level 1 to 2.5) and climb to 15,000 Stardust per step (from Level 49 to 50). Powering an ordinary Pokémon all the way from Level 1 to Level 50 totals 520,000 Stardust—270,000 Stardust from Level 1 to 40, plus 250,000 Stardust from Level 40 to 50. Relative to that baseline, Lucky Pokémon cut power-up Stardust by 50% (0.5×), Shadow Pokémon add a 20% surcharge (1.2×), and Purified Pokémon reduce power-up Stardust by 10% (0.9×).
Even special species with unusual Candy demands, such as Eternatus, follow the standard 520,000-Stardust schedule from Level 1 to 50, though you should always check the exact cost displayed on your Pokémon's summary screen.
Other upgrades and social features follow fixed Stardust tiers. In trading, both Trainers pay the cost of the more expensive Pokémon in the swap. A trade for an ordinary Pokémon already registered in both Pokédexes costs a flat 100 Stardust at any Friendship tier.
Unregistered ordinary trades or registered Shiny, Legendary, and Ultra Beast trades cost 20,000 Stardust for Good Friends, 16,000 for Great Friends (20% off), 1,600 for Ultra Friends (92% off), and 800 for Best or Forever Friends (96% off); unregistered Shiny, Legendary, or Ultra Beast trades scale across those same tiers at 1,000,000, 800,000, 80,000, and 40,000 Stardust. Unlocking a second Charged Attack costs 10,000, 50,000, 75,000, or 100,000 Stardust by species tier (modified by 1.2× for Shadow and 0.8× for Purified Pokémon).
Purifying a Shadow Pokémon costs 1,000, 3,000, 5,000, or 20,000 Stardust, while changing forms on eligible species such as Furfrou, Shaymin, Keldeo, or Hoopa typically costs 5,000 or 10,000 Stardust. Activating an Adventure Effect outside battle also consumes Stardust and Candy—such as 3,000 Stardust for Dusk Mane or Dawn Wings Necrozma and 5,000 Stardust for Origin Forme Dialga, Origin Forme Palkia, Black or White Kyurem, or Eternatus.
Catch rewards and a practical spending budget
Standard catch Stardust scales with a Pokémon's evolutionary stage: 100 Stardust for a base-stage Pokémon, 300 for a first-stage evolution, and 500 for a second-stage evolution (Pokémon that evolve from Baby Pokémon, such as Pikachu or Clefairy, count as base stage, except Togetic and Lucario).
Certain species override this baseline with bonus catch amounts, ranging from 500 Stardust (such as Paras, Meowth, Delibird, Shroomish, Foongus, and Morelull) and 750 Stardust (Staryu, Alolan Meowth, Sableye, Combee, and Trubbish) to 1,000 Stardust (Shellder and Chimecho) and 2,100 Stardust (Audino). Catching a Pokémon in matching weather applies a 1.25× weather boost modifier to the catch Stardust, turning a standard 100-Stardust base catch into 125 Stardust.
When multiple catch bonuses are active at the same time, their modifiers multiply together. You can calculate the total Stardust earned from a catch using:
S_catch = B × m_event × m_star × m_weather
In this formula, B is the species' base catch Stardust, m_event is the active event catch modifier (1 if no event bonus applies), m_star is the Star Piece modifier (1.5 while active, or 1 without), and m_weather is the weather boost modifier (1.25 in matching weather, or 1 otherwise).
Keeping the baseline of an ordinary base-stage catch (B = 100 Stardust) during a 3× catch-Stardust event (m_event = 3) with an active Star Piece (m_star = 1.5) and no weather boost (m_weather = 1), the combined multiplier is 3 × 1.5 = 4.5, yielding 100 × 4.5 = 450 Stardust.
If that same Pokémon is also weather-boosted (m_weather = 1.25), the payout becomes 100 × 3 × 1.5 × 1.25 = 562 Stardust (rounded down). Note that an event bonus labeled for catches only raises m_event on catches; a Star Piece still applies its 1.5× modifier to other eligible sources—such as Egg hatches (400 to 6,400 base Stardust by Egg distance), Raid Battles (1,000 base), Team GO Rocket battles (500 for Grunts, 1,000 for Leaders, 5,000 for Giovanni), Routes (1,000 base), Research Breakthroughs (2,000 base), First Catch of the Day streaks (1,800 base, or 9,000 on day 7), and GO Battle League rewards—without the catch-event multiplier.
Keep a working Stardust reserve for your next immediate goal rather than spending down to zero on half-finished builds. A Pokémon that needs both high-level power-ups and a second Charged Attack carries two separate price tags, and high-level Trainer progression tasks also require earning and spending large amounts of Stardust (including maxing out Pokémon CP).
Once spent, Stardust cannot be recovered: transferring an upgraded Pokémon returns no Stardust, evolving a Pokémon only changes its species without raising its level, and HYPER TRAINING raises Individual Values (IVs) using Bottle Caps without replacing the Stardust needed for power-ups or second Charged Attacks.
