Pokémon Home is a new cloud service app designed to help pokémon trainers store, trade, and transfer their collection of pokémon across multiple generations of games. Nintendo and The Pokémon Company have announced Pokémon Home is coming next month to iOS and Android mobile devices, as well as the Nintendo Switch, and provided details on the pricing and functionality.

Pokémon Home will be free to download for basic functionality, but you’ll need to enroll in the Premium Plan subscription if you’re hoping to transfer older generation pokémon from the 3DS era, as well as store and trade a larger amount of pokémon.

The Premium Plan is priced as follows (not including tax):

  • 1 month – $2.99
  • 3 months – $4.99
  • 12 months – $15.99

The free version allows the transfer of pokémon between the current Switch generation: Let’s Go, Eevee, Let’s Go, Pikachu, Sword, and Shield. However, once a pokemon from Let’s Go, Eevee or Let’s Go, Pikachu is transferred to Sword and Shield, it cannot be returned to its original game, due to Sword and Shield’s expanded features.

Pokémon GO will not be supported at launch but “there are plans to support Pokémon GO in the future.”

The basic plan only supports up to 30 pokémon in storage, and limits the number of pokémon you can include in Wonder Box trades and the Global Trade System.

With the Premium Plan, users can trade pokémon from Nintendo’s previous cloud service app, Pokémon Bank, which supported the Nintendo 3DS era of Pokémon games (and earlier using Poké Transporter). As a helpful bonus, both older apps will be free for one month after Pokémon Home’s release, letting you get everything organized into Bank, then into Home, though you’ll still need to pay for at least one month of Home for the Premium Plan. This should be obvious but: transferring from Bank to Home is a one-way street.

The Premium version also supports up to 6,000 pokémon in storage, up to 10 pokémon in Wonder Boxes, and 3 pokémon in the GTS. Premium users can also host trade rooms for more direct online trading.

To support all these pokémon, Home will officially add the National Dex to the latest generation (including Mega Evolutions). Pokémon Home also features Mystery Gifts, Home Points (which can be transferred to Battle Points), the Judge function (for Premium users), and various stats and pokémon news.

Note that there are important differences between the Switch and mobile versions of Home. Namely, the Switch version is used to move pokémon between the Switch games themselves, while the mobile version can perform trades and receive mystery gifts. Both versions can transfer from Pokémon Bank.

Pokémon Home is launching in February for mobile and Switch.


This article was written by

Eric has been writing for over nine years with bylines at Dicebreaker, Pixelkin, Polygon, PC Gamer, Tabletop Gaming magazine, and more covering movies, TV shows, video games, tabletop games, and tech. He reviews and live streams D&D adventures every week on his YouTube channel. He also makes a mean tuna quesadilla.