Pokémon GO trade not working: check these in order

Last updated 2026-08-09

A trade can fail for three unrelated reasons: your account, where the two of you are standing, or the one Pokémon you are trying to send. Work through them in that order. The table below maps what you see on screen to the cause and the fix. This page is the diagnosis; the rules themselves live in the guides it links to.

How do you work out why a Pokémon GO trade is not working?

Check in three stages, in order. First the account-level requirements: both trainers at Trainer level 10, and on each other's friend list. Then where you both are, because an in-person trade needs both trainers physically in the same place. Only then the specific Pokémon, which is where the longest list of causes sits.

The order is about effort, not frequency. Level and friend list are two glances at a profile and they either clear the whole page in seconds or end the search. Location is the next cheapest. The Pokémon itself comes last because it has the most possible causes and you have to open the tradability guide to work through them. If a trade fails with every friend and every Pokémon, none of these three stages applies, so skip to the outage question at the end.

Why is there no Trade button in Pokémon GO?

The Trade button requires Trainer level 10 and a trainer who is already on your friend list. Both trainers need level 10, not just one. If the button is missing on one specific person's profile but present on others, the friendship has not been established yet.

There is no friendship-level requirement for an ordinary trade, so someone added minutes ago qualifies. This is also behind the most confusing version of the problem: a trainer above level 10 has a working button while their partner below it has nothing, so it reads as one broken account rather than a shared requirement. If the real problem is that you have nobody within reach to trade with, /guides/find-trading-partners covers where trainers actually meet, including PoGo Alley.

Why is the Trade button greyed out in Pokémon GO?

The requirement being enforced is proximity. Niantic requires both trainers to be physically in the same location for an in-person trade and publishes no distance in metres, so treat any guide printing a figure as guessing. The check runs on your GPS position, not on your friendship screen.

If you are standing together and the trade still will not start, the position the game holds for one of you is wrong. Indoors, GPS drift alone is enough. Step outside, let the blue dot settle, and retry. Failing that, force-close and reopen the app and confirm you are still signed in: an expired session is worth ruling out, because it leaves you at the same dead end as a distance problem. The one way to trade with someone who is genuinely far away is a Remote Trade, which is a separate system with its own unlock and its own limits, covered in /guides/remote-trading.

Why can't I trade one particular Pokémon?

Start with the reversible states, because they are the only causes you can undo. Eight of them block a trade: your active buddy, a Pokémon defending a gym, a Pokémon placed at a Power Spot or Pokémon Playground, a favourited Pokémon, a Pokémon below full HP, an actively Mega Evolved Pokémon, a Fused Pokémon, and Zacian or Zamazenta in Crowned form. Clear the state and the Pokémon can be traded again, with no cooldown.

Two of those catch people out. Crowned Zacian and Zamazenta look like a permanent ban and are not: remove the Rusted Sword or Rusted Shield and they trade normally. A Pokémon left at a Power Spot or Playground is easy to forget about entirely, because nothing on its summary screen says where it is. None of the eight is remote-only either; they block in-person trades just the same. If none of them applies, the Pokémon has almost certainly been traded before, since every Pokémon can be traded exactly once and the game shows no badge for it, or it belongs to a category that can never be traded at all. /guides/what-cant-be-traded owns both lists and how to clear each reversible state, including the categories whose sourcing is community rather than official.

Why does Pokémon GO say I have already done a Special Trade today?

You get one Special Trade per day and it belongs to you, not to the friendship. Using it with one friend spends it for every other friend that day. Special Trades also require Good Friends or higher, so a brand-new friendship can trade ordinary Pokémon but not a Legendary.

Ordinary trades with the same friend still work once the Special Trade is gone, so the fix on the day is to swap something ordinary and save the special one. Some events raise the daily allowance above one. Which Pokémon trigger a Special Trade in the first place is in /guides/what-cant-be-traded, and what each tier costs is in /guides/stardust-cost.

Why can't I remote trade a Pokémon I caught recently?

Pokémon caught within the last 30 days cannot be included in a Remote Trade. The window is remote-only, so the same Pokémon can be traded in person the day you catch it. Check the catch date on the Pokémon's info screen and wait out the remainder.

This is the one restriction that behaves differently remotely, and it is the usual reason a Pokémon is missing from the Remote Trade tag list when nothing else about it looks wrong. Everything else that blocks a trade blocks it both ways. If the Remote Trade option itself is unavailable rather than the Pokémon, the cause is the friendship rather than the Pokémon, and /guides/remote-trading has the thresholds, limits and response windows.

Is Pokémon GO trading down right now?

If trading fails with every friend and every Pokémon, stop troubleshooting your account. Trading has been disabled globally before, most visibly on 19 January 2022, when it was suspended to fix a bug that let Lucky Friend status apply to more than one trade.

The fastest official check is the in-game Get Support option, which routes to the Pokémon GO Help Center. The game is now run by Scopely Explore, the name the Niantic games team took in July 2026, which publishes a Pokémon GO support page at explore.scopely.com. There is no public component status page. Before assuming an outage, force-close and reopen the app and confirm you are still signed in.