Evergreen
Appraisal Explained: Reading Your Team Leader's IV Rating
What your team leader's appraisal tells you: the star ratings, the three stat bars, the IV floors on raid and traded Pokémon, and when a low rating is better.
Appraisal is the free, built-in way to see a Pokémon's hidden Individual Values (IVs): one each for Attack, Defense and HP, each from 0 to 15. It's how you tell which of your copies deserves Stardust. You can appraise as often as you like, and once you know what the stars and bars mean, sorting a full storage takes a lot less guesswork.
How to appraise a Pokémon
- Open the Pokémon's summary screen from your storage.
- Tap the menu button in the bottom corner and choose Appraise.
- Tap through your team leader's comments.
- Read the result: a star rating plus three stat bars.
Who delivers the verdict depends on your team: Blanche for Mystic, Candela for Valor and Spark for Instinct. The information is the same whichever leader you have. Our guide to Mystic, Valor and Instinct covers the teams themselves.
The star rating
The stars summarise all three IVs together. Add the three values up (the maximum is 45) and the total decides the rating. At the time of writing, the bands players have mapped out are:
| Rating | IV total (out of 45) | Roughly |
|---|---|---|
| 0 stars | 0–22 | Under 50% |
| 1 star | 23–29 | 51–64% |
| 2 stars | 30–36 | 67–80% |
| 3 stars | 37–44 | 82–98% |
| 3 stars, highlighted | 45 | 100%, a "perfect" Pokémon |
A perfect Pokémon's stars are shown in a different colour so they stand out; players often call these "hundos" or four-star Pokémon.
Reading the three bars
Below the stars sit bars for Attack, Defense and HP. Each bar shows one IV from 0 to 15 and is split into three segments of five points. An empty bar is a 0, a bar that fills two segments is around 10, and a completely full bar is a 15, which is drawn in a different colour. The bars give a close estimate rather than exact numbers, but combined with the star total they usually narrow things down well. The storage search also understands appraisal ratings. Its stat filters use 0 to 4 for each bar, with 0 an empty bar and 4 a full one, and our guide to Pokémon GO search strings shows how to filter by them.
Built-in IV floors
Where a Pokémon came from sets a minimum for each of its IVs. At the time of writing these floors have been stable for a long time, and they explain why some appraisals are never low. Event encounters can occasionally work differently.
| How you got it | Minimum for each IV | What that means |
|---|---|---|
| Ordinary wild catch | 0 | Anything is possible |
| Weather-boosted wild catch | 4 | Very poor rolls are ruled out |
| Standard raid reward, Egg hatch or research encounter | 10 | Always at least 2 stars |
| Lucky Pokémon from a trade | 12 | Always at least 2 stars, almost always 3 |
| Other traded Pokémon | Rises with friendship level | Trading with close friends gives better minimums |
Shadow Pokémon, including those from Shadow Raids, don't follow these minimums and can roll lower. Special event encounters can also differ, so check the in-game news.
Two other things move IVs. A trade re-rolls them within the floor above, which can go up or down, and purifying a Shadow Pokémon raises each IV a little, never past 15. Powering up and evolving don't change them. Our guide to trading in Pokémon GO covers friendship levels and Lucky Pokémon in more detail.
What the appraisal doesn't tell you
- How strong the species is. Stars compare a Pokémon with others of its own species, so a 3-star common Pokémon can still be far weaker than a 1-star Legendary.
- Its level or moves. Check CP and moves on the summary screen. The game doesn't show level as a number, but the arc behind the Pokémon and its power-up cost give you a rough idea.
- Which IV spread is best for a given league. Under a CP cap the ideal spread depends on the species, which stars and bars alone can't show.
A quick sorting routine
- After a catching session, appraise anything you might keep rather than judging by CP alone.
- Keep 3-star and perfect Pokémon of species you use for raids or Master League.
- For Great or Ultra League candidates, check the bars as described below before deciding.
- Mark keepers as favourites so they can't be transferred by accident, and give them a tag (or a nickname) so you can filter them out when searching for transfer candidates.
- Transfer or trade the rest, remembering that a trade re-rolls the IVs for whoever receives it.
High stars for raids, low Attack for Great League
For raids and Master League, where there's no CP cap, higher stars and a full Attack bar are simply better. In Great and Ultra League the usual rule often flips, at least for species that would otherwise go over the cap: the copy you want tends to be low in Attack and high in the other two bars, so a 1- or 2-star appraisal can be your best one. Our guide to Great, Ultra and Master League explains why the cap works that way.
Appraisal questions
Does appraising again change the result?
No. A Pokémon's IVs don't change when you appraise, power up or evolve it, so you'll get the same reading every time. Only trading it or purifying a Shadow Pokémon changes them.
Can I see exact IV numbers in the game?
Not at the time of writing. The bars and stars are the in-game view, and they're usually enough.
Is a 3-star always worth powering up over a 2-star?
Not necessarily. A few IV points matter less than the species itself, its moves and how far it has already been powered up. Use the appraisal to choose between copies of the same species, not to decide whether a species is worth building at all.
Found a copy worth keeping? The Trainer Hub homepage gathers our raid and battle guides for putting it to work.