Candy is a fundamental resource within Pokémon Go; It’s used for the very important actions of evolving and powering up your Pokémon. Each Pokémon family has its own type of candy, for example, Bulbasaur candy is used to evolve and/or power up Bulbasaur, Ivysaur and Venusaur. It cannot be used to evolve or power up any other Pokémon.
Evolution costs
Depending on the stage of evolution, it can cost different amounts of candy to activate the evolution; Pokémon that have three stages of evolution tend to cost 25 for the first stage and then a further 100 for the second stage. Pokémon with only two stages usually cost 50 candies to evolve, but these aren’t always the case. Exceptions to this rule are:
- Baby Pokémon- cost 25 candy to evolve even if it only evolves once.
- Mass evolution ‘fodder’ 1 – Pidgey, Weedle, Caterpie, Wurmple and Whismur all cost 12 and then 50 candies for their evolutions.
- Mass evolution ‘fodder’ 2 – Rattata and Marill both cost 25 candies for their final evolution.
- After Gen4 – Some Pokémon families gain an extra evolution stage in Generation IV. This will most likely mean that some evolutions that cost 50 candies now, will reduce to 25.
- The 400s – Four Pokémon families actually require 400 candies to evolve. They are Magikarp, Swablu, Wailmer and Meltan. For the first two, the reason for this is probably just because their evolved forms, Gyarados and Alteria, are quite sought after Pokémon. For Wailmer, it’s probably because its evolved form Wailord, is just so massive. Meltan on the other hand, is the first Mythical Pokémon to ever be capable of evolving so it makes sense that it would require a lot of hard work to achieve it.
- Eeveelutions – Eevee only costs 25 candy to evolve into one of its 7 different evolved forms (sometimes plus other requirements).
- Feebas – requires 100 candies for its single evolution into Milotic (plus a 20km walking distance requirement)
Power up costs
Generally speaking, the higher the level a Pokémon has been powered up to, the more candy it will cost to power it up further. The power up costs are the same for all Pokémon, regardless of its species.
Gaining Candy
There are several ways to accumulate candy. They are:
- By catching Pokémon – Every Pokémon you catch will award you with at least three of its family’s candy. Catching a second or third stage evolved form will award 5 or 10 candies respectively. Feeding a Pinap or Silver Pinap Berry before throwing your Pokéball will double these amounts if you successfully catch it on that throw.
- By transferring a Pokémon – Every time you transfer a Pokémon, you get one of its family’s candy.
- By trading a Pokémon – You will get at least one candy for the Pokémon that you trade to someone else. This can be increased to two candies if the distance between where the two traded Pokémon were caught is over 10km, or three candies if it’s over 100km.
- From your Buddy – Your Buddy Pokémon will acquire one of its candy for every completion of its distance requirement. This distance can either be 1km, 3km, 5km, or 20km (20km is for legendaries and mythicals only) depending on its species and usually, the rarer the Pokémon is, the further its buddy distance is. For more info, please check out this buddy candy distance chart.
- By hatching eggs – Hatching a Pokémon from an egg will award you with several of its family’s candies. The higher the distance required to hatch the egg, the more candy you will gain from it.
- Rare candy – this item can be gained from successfully completing a raid, from completing certain research tasks, and as a reward for completing 50km on the Adventure Sync feature. It can be given to any Pokémon which will convert it into one of its candies. This is most useful for topping up the candies for your legendary Pokémon as they’re often the hardest to come by.
- Feeding defenders – If you feed a berry to a Pokemon that’s defending one of your team’s gyms, there’s roughly a 1 in 100 chance of getting one of it’s candies in return.
Double Candy Events
Occasionally there are in-game events for special occasions like Halloween, which award double candy for certain actions. In earlier events extra candy would be given for all of the actions that award candy, but more recently it has only been increased for catches.
One of the most satisfying things in the game (in this writer’s opinion) is encountering a third stage evolution during a double candy event, feeding it a Pinap Berry and gaining 40 of its candies in one go!
