How to Trade with Friends in Pokémon GO

Here’s what you need to know about trading Pokémon with friends, Stardust cost, and how IVs can change in Pokémon GO

Sometimes, your friends will have better luck than you in Pokémon GO, or they live in a different part of the world, giving them access to Pokémon you wouldn’t encounter. To help make meeting these potentially rarer Pokémon, Niantic has enabled friends the opportunity to trade amongst one another. There are a few steps to trading you should know about when doing it with other Trainers.

How to Trade With Friends

The first thing you need to do before trading with another Trainer is to add them to your friend’s list. You’ll need to send them your 12-digit code, or receive theirs, and become friends. After that, there’s no cooldown period. You can start trading with them immediately. You need to be level Trainer level 10 to start trading, too.

After that, you need to click on your avatar icon on the lower left-hand section of the screen and visit your friend’s list. From there, click on the Trainer you’d like to trade with and open up their profile. On the right side of this section, you should have the option to trade. Click it, and the other Trainer will receive a notification you want to trade with them. They need to accept it to begin the trade.

You can pick a Pokémon from your roster to send with them and wait for them to make their selection. The trade should be quick, and make sure to consult with the other Trainer of what you’d like in exchange.

You can only trade with Trainers when you’re close enough to them. You won’t be able to trade with Trainers who are too far away.

Stardust Costs for Trading

Unfortunately, you cannot trade on a whim. You need to offer up Stardust to trade with friends, and the values vary based on your Friendship levels. The higher the Friendship levels with a particular Trainer, the less Stardust you need to spend. These values range for unowned Pokémon, owned Pokémon, and Shiny Pokémon from both categories.

Unowned Pokémon

• Good Friend – Shiny is 1,000,000, and Regular is 20,000
• Great Friend – Shiny is 800,000 and Regular is 20,000
• Ultra Fiend – Shiny is 80,000 and Regular is 16,000
• Best Friend – Shiny is 40,000 and Regular is 800

Owned Pokémon

• Good Friend – Shiny is 20,000 and Regular is 100
• Great Friend – Shiny is 16,000 and Regular is 80
• Ultra Friend – Shiny is 1,600 and Regular is 8
• Best Friend – Shiny is 800 and Regular is 4

Individual Values Change

When you trade a Pokémon to another Trainer, theirs a chance their Individual Values (IVs) change. There’s a random chance of these IVs increasing or decreasing. If they grow, the Pokémon becomes stronger than they originally could have been, but if they decline, it becomes weaker.

Trading Pokémon can become a gamble, and if you guess wrong, you might walk away with a weaker Pokémon than you initially thought you were going to receive. You can see the range of potential stat changes of each Pokémon, giving you a decent idea of the outcome. Unfortunately, you can only trade a Pokémon once, and you cannot continually trade them to try for a chance of perfect IVs.