How many different Pokémon species are there?

Gaming medium Data from 2024

Guess before you scroll — the answer is below

In Pokémon. Thousands: 1.000 · Decimals: 1,5 · Millions: 9m.

The answer

1,025 Pokémon

Roughly 1K.

There are 1,025 official Pokémon species as of the ninth generation. The first game had 151, a number an entire generation memorised — and which is why almost everybody guesses far too low on this one.

How to get close to this number

Multiply generations by additions. This site's companion question puts the franchise at nine generations, and each adds around a hundred new species. Nine times a hundred plus the original set gives a figure just over a thousand, and the arithmetic is more reliable than any impression.

The explanation names why almost everyone guesses low: the first game had a hundred and fifty-one, a number an entire generation memorised completely. That figure is burned in as "the" number, and people anchor on it and adjust upward far too little — a textbook case of anchoring bias with a specific, datable cause.

The design achievement behind the total deserves noting. Sustaining roughly a hundred new creature designs per generation for three decades, each needing a name, a type, a silhouette and a place in a balance system, is a content production rate very few franchises could maintain — and it is why the total is now larger than any player can name.

Where this number comes from

Source The Pokémon Company official Pokédex
Figure refers to 2024
Last checked
Unit Pokémon

Numbers move. If this one has drifted from its source, let us know.

Think you can do better?

Five fresh questions every day. No account needed.

Play today’s puzzle

Related questions