Pokemon GO: When to Evolve Your Pokemon and When to Power Up

If you’re here at this wonderful Pokemon GO guide, it’s probably because you’ve built up a bank of candies and you’re wondering if now is the right time to evolve your Pokemon. Catching the number of Pokemon needed to have enough candies to evolve is a time consuming process, and it’d be wise to make sure you’re making the right choice before potentially flushing candies down the drain.

The truth is, there’s no hardline right or wrong answer when it comes to evolving your Pokemon. It really comes down to personal preference, and how much patience you have for waiting things out.

Let’s say you’re just starting out and you have a super common Pokemon like Pidgey ready to evolve. If you just want Pidgey and its evolutions for your Pokedex. and don’t plan on using it to battle, feel free just to evolve ASAP. Don’t waste any candies or stardust on powering it up to increase its CP.

If you’re interested in raising a Pokemon that’s competitive in battle, then you have a couple of choices. You could, once again, save up your candies and go straight to evolving Pidgey into Pidgeotto and then Pidegot as soon as they become available. Then, once it’s evolved, start using extra candies and stardust to keep its CP as high as your trainer level will allow.

If you want to be conservative (aka stingy) with your candies and stardust, you could be picky and wait until you find a high CP Pidgey out in the wild. As your trainer level increases, you have a better chance of finding higher CP Pokemon, including the common ones you see all the time like Pidgey, and rarer Pokemon too. So if you’re patient, you could hold out for a high CP ‘mon to show up, and evolve that instead, saving some stardust in the process.

You could also get lucky and find the evolutions in the wild themselves, which can save you some candies and time. Keep in mind though that oftentimes, when you’re finding evolved Pokemon in the wild, they are usually at a lower CP than if you were to start with its lowest evolution and train/evolve it up. In other words, finding a Pidgey and evolving it will usually end up with higher CP quicker than if you just found a Pidgeotto out and about and started with that. So yes you’ll save candies, but if you want to battle with it, you’ll probably need more stardust. If you have plenty of stardust sitting around though, go for it!

So remember, when to evolve your Pokemon in Pokemon GO is really up to personal preference. Here are a couple of tips summed up though for you TL;DR readers out there. Also be sure to check our wiki guide for more tips and tricks. Good luck and happy hunting Pokemon GO fans!

1. If you’re just trying to complete the Pokedex: Evolve right away.
2. If you’re trying to raise a high CP Pokemon to battle with ASAP: Start with the lowest evolution, evolve as soon as you can by saving candies and then once fully evolved, start powering it up with stardust.
3. If you’re low on stardust but candy is no object: Try looking for a high CP basic non-evolved Pokemon in the wild first instead of just leveling up the first one you find. That should save you some stardust leveling it up.
4. If you’re low on candy but stardust is no object: Try looking for the evolved version in the wild if possible to save you an entire evolution stage.