Where to Spend Stardust: A Priority Order with Worked Budgets

Stardust is the only resource in Pokemon GO that every part of the game competes for and that you cannot target-farm for one species. Candy comes from catching the thing you want; Stardust comes from everything and goes to everything. So the question is never "can I afford this power-up" but "what else would the same Stardust have bought".

The answer starts with what a level costs and what it gives back. A Pokemon's Attack, Defense and HP all scale with the CP multiplier of its level, so the ratio between two multipliers is the real gain of a power-up. Raid and egg Pokemon arrive at level 20, which makes that the natural starting line.

The costs are the game's own power-up table; the first three rows add up to the familiar 225,000 Stardust and 248 Candy for level 20 to 40. The gains are the CP multipliers divided by each other: 0.5974 at level 20, 0.7317 at 30, 0.7616 at 35, 0.7903 at 40 and 0.8403 at 50.

Read the last column twice. A percent of extra strength costs about 3,300 Stardust on the way to level 30 and about 39,700 on the way to level 50 — twelve times as much, before counting the XL Candy. That single fact produces the rule the rest of this guide applies: bring many Pokemon to level 30 before you bring any Pokemon to level 40, and fill your level 40 teams before you think about 50.

1. Power-ups to level 30–35 on Pokemon with a job

The best return in the game, provided the Pokemon fills a role: a raid attacker of a type you are short of, or a PvP pick. "High CP" is not a role. Use best attackers by type to see which species are worth it, and check which types the bosses on the current raid list are weak to.

2. A second charged move on PvP Pokemon

Between 10,000 and 100,000 Stardust depending on the species. In GO Battle League it is close to mandatory, because one charged move makes you predictable and gives you nothing to bait shields with. In raids it is almost never needed. Details are in the second-move section below.

3. Level 35 to 40 on your core team

88,000 Stardust for under 4%. Worth paying for the six to twelve Pokemon you use in most raids, and not for the bench.

4. Trades

Ordinary trades are nearly free: 100 Stardust between Good Friends and 4 between Best Friends. Special Trades are where Stardust disappears. A shiny or legendary you already have registered costs 20,000 at Good Friends and 800 at Best Friends; one that is new to your Pokedex costs 1,000,000 at Good Friends, 800,000 at Great, 80,000 at Ultra and 40,000 at Best. Waiting for Best Friends saves 1,000,000 − 40,000 = 960,000 Stardust on a single trade. The trading guide has the full table.

5. Level 40 to 50, and purification

Level 50 is the most expensive 6% in the game and belongs at the end of the queue, except for Master League, where everyone else is maxed. Purifying a Shadow Pokemon costs roughly 1,000 to 20,000 Stardust depending on the species, which is cheap, but it throws away the Shadow's 20% attack bonus, so for raid attackers it is usually Stardust spent to make a Pokemon worse. Shadow, purified or normal covers the exceptions.

Go through these in order and stop at the first "no".

1. Does it have a job? It should appear for a type you lack in the attacker rankings, or in the Great, Ultra or Master League lists. If it appears nowhere, it is a collection piece, and collection pieces do not need levels.
2. Is it fully evolved? If not, evolve first. Evolution is free in Stardust and re-rolls the moves, so you find out what you really have before paying for it.
3. Can it get the right moves? Open its Pokedex page and compare. If its best move is legacy and yours lacks it, the real price includes an Elite TM — see who deserves one. If it is a Shadow still carrying Frustration, it cannot use a proper charged move until the next Team GO Rocket Takeover, and your Stardust sits idle until then.
4. Could a cheaper copy exist? A Lucky Pokemon pays half. If you have a friend to trade with and spare copies of the species, a Lucky one may be a few trades away.
5. Are the IVs good enough? For raids, "good enough" is generous. On a species with 250 base Attack, a 15 Attack IV gives 265 and a 10 gives 260: a 1.9% difference, roughly what a single level gives you below level 30. Do not wait months for a perfect one. For Great and Ultra League the logic is reversed and low Attack is better; run it through the IV checker or read PvP IVs explained before spending.
6. How far? Level 30 for anything new. Level 35–40 once it is on your main team. Level 50 when it is a Master League pick, or when every slot of the team around it is already at 40.

For scale: a raid pays 1,000 Stardust, a Team GO Rocket Grunt 500, a Leader 1,000 and Giovanni 5,000; a 10 km egg hatches for 1,600 to 3,200. A basic catch is 100, or 300 and 500 for second- and third-stage Pokemon, with 25% more in boosted weather and 50% more under a Star Piece. So 75,000 Stardust is 75 raids, 150 Grunts, or 500 basic catches with a Star Piece running (500 × 150 = 75,000).

100,000 Stardust: one attacker, properly

• One raid attacker from level 20 to 30: 75,000.
• A second charged move on a 10,000-Stardust species for Great League: 10,000.
• Total 75,000 + 10,000 = 85,000, leaving 15,000 for ordinary trades and the next evolution you want to test.

The tempting alternative is to push one favourite from 30 to 40 instead, which costs 62,000 + 88,000 = 150,000 and is already out of reach. At this budget, width beats height every time.

500,000 Stardust: a team, not a trophy

• Six attackers from level 20 to 30: 6 × 75,000 = 450,000.
• One second charged move on a 50,000 species: 50,000.
• Total 450,000 + 50,000 = 500,000.

Compare that with the other thing 500,000 nearly buys: a single Pokemon from level 20 to 50 for 225,000 + 250,000 = 475,000, plus 296 XL Candy. One maxed attacker faints and leaves five weak ones behind it; six level 30 attackers of the right type carry a raid. If the six are Lucky, the same 450,000 takes them to level 35 instead, since 6 × (75,000 + 62,000) ÷ 2 = 411,000.

2,000,000 Stardust: depth, then one luxury

• Main team of six to level 35: 6 × (75,000 + 62,000) = 6 × 137,000 = 822,000.
• A second team of six, other types, to level 30: 6 × 75,000 = 450,000.
• Two PvP Pokemon with second moves at 50,000 each: 100,000.
• One of the main six taken from 35 to 50 for Master League or short-handed raids: 88,000 + 250,000 = 338,000 (and 296 XL Candy).
• Total 822,000 + 450,000 + 100,000 + 338,000 = 1,710,000. The remaining 290,000 is a reserve for the next Community Day, rebalance or Special Trade.

Keeping a reserve is part of the plan, not leftover. Move rebalances at the start of a GO Battle League season and new Community Day moves regularly promote a species you own but have not built, and the event calendar tells you when the next one lands.

Three states change the price of every power-up. Lucky halves the Stardust and leaves Candy alone. Purified multiplies both Stardust and Candy by 0.9. Shadow multiplies both by 1.2. Lucky and purified stack, to 0.5 × 0.9 = 0.45.

Two consequences are easy to miss. First, a Shadow can never be Lucky, because Shadow Pokemon cannot be traded; the 20% surcharge is permanent unless you purify, and purifying gives up the attack bonus you were paying for. Budget a Shadow raid attacker at 270,000 to level 40, not 225,000. Second, Lucky is worth far more on expensive projects than cheap ones: it saves 37,500 on a level 30 build and 237,500 on a level 50 one. If you have one guaranteed Lucky trade to use, spend it on the species you intend to max.

The price is set by the species' buddy distance, not by its strength, which is why some of the best PvP Pokemon are also the cheapest to finish.

• Any Pokemon you take into GO Battle League: yes. Unlock it before you power up the last few levels; it changes more matchups than the levels do.
• Raid attackers: almost never. In a raid you fire the same best charged move on repeat. The exception is a Pokemon that genuinely plays two types, where one copy with both moves saves you building a second copy — compare 50,000 or 75,000 for the move with 75,000 or more for another build.
• Legendaries at 100,000: only for Master League, or for a species with two raid roles. That Stardust is a whole attacker at level 30 with 25,000 left over.
• If the species has a baby stage: buy the move there. Baby Pokemon pay 10,000 whatever their evolution costs, and the unlocked slot survives evolution, which turns a 50,000 or 75,000 purchase into a 10,000 one.

• Powering up by CP. A 3,000 CP Pokemon of the wrong type does less to a boss than a 2,200 CP one hitting its weakness for 1.6× damage. Type first, CP last.
• Powering up before evolving. The moves re-roll on evolution. Evolve, look, then pay.
• Chasing level 50 with half a team. 250,000 Stardust for 6.3% on one Pokemon, while three unbuilt attackers would each gain 22.5% for the same money.
• Special Trades at low friendship. 1,000,000 Stardust today or 40,000 in about three months. No Pokedex entry is that urgent.
• Purifying raid attackers. You pay Stardust to remove a 20% attack bonus. Purify for a specific PvP need or to fix IVs, not by default.
• Starting from a level 1 wild catch. Level 1 to 20 costs 45,000 Stardust that a raid, egg or research Pokemon never has to pay, since those arrive at level 15 to 20. A weather-boosted wild catch can already be level 35.
• Overshooting a league cap. One power-up past 1,500 or 2,500 CP locks a Pokemon out of that league for good. The power-up screen shows the CP you will land on; read it.

None of these is dramatic on its own. Together they are the difference between an account with two maxed favourites and nothing behind them, and one that brings the right six Pokemon to every raid on the list. When your storage gets crowded with half-built projects, the storage clean-up routine helps you decide which ones to finish.