Worth a Master Ball?

A Master Ball guarantees the catch, and most players only ever get one or two, ever. This tool gives a starting-point verdict based on how genuinely rare and hard-to-replace a Pokémon is - it's a heuristic, not an official probability, so treat it as a second opinion, not the final word.

Base rarity tiers

Every verdict starts from the species itself, before any context toggle is touched:

• YesMythical & Legendary - this is exactly what a Master Ball is for
• Leans yesUltra Beasts & regional exclusives - genuinely hard to get another
• Probably notPseudo-legendaries - strong, but usually catchable again
• NoCommon species - save it for something rarer

What the 4 context toggles do

It's shiny

A penalty, not a bonus - shininess doesn't change catch or flee rate, and a lot of shiny encounters come from sources (raids, research) that can't flee at all. It makes a Master Ball less necessary, not more.

Near-max CP for a raid boss

CP is visible before you catch, and raid bosses have a fixed level, so near-max CP is a reliable proxy for a near-perfect IV - something you generally can't know ahead of time in a wild or Team GO Rocket encounter.

Low catch rate, fleeing, or Shadow

Covers anything making the catch itself genuinely risky right now - a low base catch rate, a Pokémon that keeps breaking free, or a Shadow Pokémon (which really does flee more than its normal form).

This raid/event won't come back

An external, checkable fact about scheduling - the raid rotation is ending, it's an Elite Raid, a ticketed one-time event - not a guess about your own future luck.

What this tool doesn't know

It has no idea what's actually in front of you - your current IVs, how many Premier Balls you have left, or anything specific to your account. Community votes further down the page are other players' opinions, not part of the algorithmic score. Fan-made, not affiliated with Nintendo/Niantic - Pokémon data © The Pokémon Company/Niantic.