Pokémon GO Trade Stardust Costs: The Complete Table

Last updated 2026-08-09

A normal Pokémon GO trade costs 100 Stardust. The price only rises when the trade involves a Shiny, a Legendary, an Ultra Beast, a Gigantamax Pokémon, Meltan or Melmetal, a Pokémon carrying a special background or Location Card, or any Pokémon or form missing from the recipient's Pokedex. The worst case is 1,000,000 Stardust each. These are in-person figures; Niantic publishes no Stardust table for Remote Trades.

How much Stardust does a trade cost in Pokémon GO?

Trading a Pokémon already registered in both Pokedexes costs 100 Stardust per trainer at every friendship level. Almost everything else is a Special Trade, priced from 800 to 1,000,000 Stardust each; the exception is a Purified Pokémon the recipient has already registered, which counts as a Special Trade but still costs 100. Both trainers pay the same amount, and when the two offered Pokémon differ in price, the higher cost applies to both.

The cost is charged to each trainer separately, not split. The floor is 100 Stardust and the ceiling is 1,000,000. Note the Purified quirk: a Purified Pokémon counts as a Special Trade, and so consumes your one Special Trade for the day, but it does not raise the Stardust cost if the recipient already has that Purified form registered. Every figure in this table is for an in-person trade.

What makes a trade a Special Trade?

Anything unusual about either Pokémon triggers it: shiny, Legendary, Ultra Beast, Gigantamax, Meltan or Melmetal, Purified, a special background or Location Card, or a Pokémon or form missing from the recipient's Pokedex. What matters for price is that only one of the two Pokémon has to qualify, and both trainers then pay the Special Trade rate rather than 100 Stardust.

Special Trades require Good Friends or higher; players at the base Friend level cannot make them at all. The pricing trap is that Niantic counts forms separately, naming regional forms, individual Unown letters, costumed Pokémon and Castform explicitly, and shiny counts as its own entry too. So a Shiny you already own in its normal form can still trigger the unregistered price. The definitive list of what does and does not count is in the tradability guide.

How many Special Trades can you do per day?

One Special Trade per day, per trainer. Events raise that: Community Days typically grant one extra for a maximum of two, and GO Fest 2026 allowed up to six per day. Remote Trades never consume your Special Trade slot regardless of what is traded, and are separately capped at 1 Remote Trade per Trainer per day.

Niantic's Help Center says only that you "can only complete a limited number of Special Trades per day" and never prints the number. The baseline of one is confirmed indirectly by Niantic's own event pages, which describe granting "one additional Special Trade" for "a maximum of two for the day".

Why did my trade cost 1,000,000 Stardust?

1,000,000 Stardust is the maximum, charged when a Shiny, Legendary, Ultra Beast, Gigantamax or Meltan/Melmetal is also new to the recipient's Pokedex and the trainers are only Good Friends. Two conditions stack: the special category and the missing Pokedex entry. The same trade at Best Friends costs 40,000.

The usual surprise is the Pokedex check. A Shiny is a separate Pokedex entry from its normal form, so trading a Shiny Gyarados to someone who owns a normal Gyarados still counts as unregistered and costs 40,000 at Best Friends rather than 800. Ask your partner to confirm the exact entry before agreeing on a price.

How much does friendship level reduce the trade cost?

Friendship cuts Special Trade costs by fixed percentages against the Good Friend price: 20% off at Great Friends, 92% off at Ultra Friends, and 96% off at Best Friends. The discount stops there. Forever Friends pay exactly the same Stardust as Best Friends, so 90 friendship points is the price floor; the 180 points that make you Forever Friends buy remote trading, not a cheaper trade.

Friendship points accrue at a maximum of one per day per friend from gifts, raids, battles and other interactions, though Niantic notes that features such as Weekly Challenges can award several in one day. Neither milestone above Best Friends changes what a trade costs: the Remote Trade tag at 175 points and Forever Friends at 180 both leave the Stardust figures exactly where they are.

Does a Lucky trade cost less Stardust?

No. Lucky trades and Lucky Friends cost the same Stardust as any other trade at that friendship level. The 50% discount people remember belongs to powering up a Lucky Pokémon afterwards, not to the trade itself. Lucky status changes IVs and power-up cost, never the trade price.

Trading a Pokémon that has been in a trainer's Pokémon storage since 2020 or earlier is guaranteed to produce a Lucky Pokémon, with a running total of 45 guaranteed Lucky Pokémon. Niantic set both figures in the New Year's 2026 event and described them as permanent rather than event-limited. Lucky Friends status also carries into Remote Trades: Niantic states that if you are Lucky Friends, your next completed trade is a Lucky Trade even if it is remote.

Does remote trading cost less Stardust?

Nobody outside Niantic knows. Remote trading unlocks when you become Forever Friends, the level reached at 180 friendship points, and Niantic publishes no Remote Trade Stardust figure at all, so the cost is undocumented. Do not assume it matches the in-person price for your friendship level, and do not assume a surcharge either.

Because a Remote Trade never counts as a Special Trade regardless of what is exchanged, the Special Trade columns above cannot be read across to it either. Everything else about the mechanics, the daily limit, the tagging and selection steps, the 48-hour response windows and the 30-day minimum age on the Pokémon, is covered in the remote trading guide. Where to find partners far enough away to need one is covered in the guide to finding trading partners, which lists PoGo Alley among the trade-matching sites.

Can an event reduce the Stardust cost of a trade?

Yes, but only inside a specific event window. Community Days and comparable events commonly halve trade Stardust costs and grant one extra Special Trade, for a maximum of two that day; GO Fest has gone as high as six Special Trades per day. No trade discount in Pokémon GO is permanent, and none applies outside the advertised hours.

Check the event page for the exact bonus and its hours, which often differ from the main event window: trade bonuses are frequently extended a few hours past the core event, so a three-hour Community Day can carry a seven-hour trade window. Be careful with older guides that quote a fixed percentage trade discount as though it were always on. Every trade discount run so far has been time-boxed to a specific event.

Which Pokémon cannot be traded at all?

Shadow Pokémon, Mythicals other than Meltan and Melmetal, any Pokémon that has already been traded once, and unhatched eggs. Favourites, your buddy, gym and Power Spot defenders, Fused Pokémon, Crowned Zacian and Zamazenta, actively Mega Evolved Pokémon and anything below full HP are reversible states rather than bans: change the state and the Pokémon becomes tradeable.

Purifying a Shadow Pokémon makes it tradeable, at which point it counts as a Special Trade but does not raise the cost if the recipient already has that Purified form registered. Remote Trades add one further exclusion: Pokémon caught within the last 30 days. The full matrix, including which blocks are permanent and which are reversible, is in the tradability guide.