Pokémon GO cooldown chart

How to read the chart

• Round up, never down.If your jump is 620 km, use the 700 km row. The chart is the floor of what's safe, not the average.
• The clock starts at your last action, not when you teleport. Land, wait out the timer, then act.
• Nothing past 1,300 km costs more. A jump from London to Tokyo and a jump from London to Cairo both cap at 120 minutes, so long-haul snipes are cheaper per kilometre than a string of medium ones.
• Two hours idle resets everything. If your last catch, spin or gym interaction was more than 2 hours ago, you can act anywhere immediately.
• Cooldowns don't stack.Taking another triggering action while you're already serving one doesn't restart the timer.

What cooldown actually is

Pokémon GO is a location game, so the server sanity-checks how fast your account moves. When two actions come from places further apart than a human could plausibly travel in the time between them, the game doesn't reject the location — it makes the second action fail. The gap it wants you to leave is the cooldown, and it scales with distance along the curve in the table above.

The distance used is the great-circle distance between the two points: the straight line over the surface of the Earth. Your route, your speed and the number of hops you made in between don't matter — only where you last acted and where you act next. That is why the calculator only ever asks for two coordinates.

What happens if you ignore it

Acting early doesn't ban your account — it makes the game quietly refuse you. This is what players mean by a “soft ban”, and the symptoms are consistent:

• Wild Pokémon flee on the first ball, every time
• Pokéstops spin but drop no items, or return “Try Again”
• Raid balls refuse to land, so the catch phase is wasted
• Gym feeds and gym placements bounce

It clears on its own the moment the cooldown finishes — but every failed action while you wait is a wasted encounter, and repeatedly hammering the servers from impossible locations is exactly the behaviour that draws attention. Respecting the chart is the single biggest thing you can do to keep an account healthy; it's why we put the calculator and this chart in front of every new member before they take their first coordinate.

Actions that will trigger a cooldown

• Catching a wild Pokémon — including Incense, Lure, Special Lure and Mystery Box spawns
• Dropping a ball on any encounter screen, wild or raid, even if the Pokémon flees
• Spinning a Pokéstop or gym disc — including a “Bag is Full” or “Try Again” spin
• Placing a Pokémon in a gym
• Feeding a gym defender inside your screen radar (remote feeding counts if the gym is in radar)
• Gym battles
• A Pokémon fleeing because you hit the catch limit
• Using a Gotcha or auto-catcher device to spin or catch

None of these re-trigger or extend a cooldown you're already serving — they only start one when you're clear.

Actions that won't trigger a cooldown

• Teleporting itself — moving your location is never the trigger
• Encountering a wild Pokémon without throwing anything
• Remote berry feeding from outside the screen radar
• Autowalk, as long as you don't spin or catch
• Hatching eggs
• Claiming quest, research and weekly rewards
• Catching a quest-reward Pokémon
• Speed raids — back-to-back raids, provided your last cooldown already finished
• Sending or opening gifts
• Evolving, powering up, trading or transferring Pokémon
• Taking snapshots
• Changing your buddy or gaining buddy candy
• Using items — potions, revives, evolution items, TMs
• Spending stardust or candy on a second charged move
• Using an Incense, Lucky Egg or Star Piece
• Deleting items from storage
• PvP battles and team-leader battles
• Placing a Lure or Special Lure on a Pokéstop
• Buying coins or shop items
• Changing your avatar or clothes
• Transferring a Pokémon to Nintendo Switch or Pokémon HOME (the Mystery Box trick)
• Claiming a free raid pass from an active gym
• Photobomb catches — Smeargle, Party Hat Pikachu and friends
• Dropping a ball on the ground while you're already on a cooldown

Two ways to spend the wait

Camping.Teleport to the spawn, tap the Pokémon and stay on the encounter screen without throwing a ball or a berry. It won't flee while you do nothing, so you can sit there until the timer runs out and then throw. This is the standard way to take a coordinate that's about to despawn.

Speed raids.Raid battles themselves don't trigger a cooldown, so if you're already clear you can fight, hit “Run” without throwing a ball, and teleport straight to the next raid. Throw a single ball at the boss and you're back on the chart.

Common questions

What is the Pokémon GO cooldown chart?

It's the table of wait times Niantic enforces between two in-game actions, based on the straight-line distance between them. 10 km is about 8 minutes, 100 km about 30 minutes, 500 km about 1 hour 4 minutes, and anything past roughly 1,300 km is the 120-minute maximum.

What is the maximum cooldown in Pokémon GO?

120 minutes — two hours. The curve reaches it at around 1,300 km, so a 1,300 km teleport and a 15,000 km teleport carry exactly the same wait.

How is cooldown distance measured?

As the great-circle (straight-line) distance between the place you last took an action and the place you want to act next. Your route, your speed and how many hops you made in between are irrelevant — only the two end points count.

What happens if you ignore cooldown?

The action fails rather than the account being banned outright: wild Pokémon flee immediately, Pokéstops give no items or return 'Try Again', raid balls won't land and gym interactions bounce. That failed-action state is what players call a soft ban, and it clears on its own once the cooldown finishes.

Does teleporting itself trigger a cooldown?

No. Only in-game actions start a cooldown — catching, spinning, gym interactions and dropping a ball on an encounter screen. You can teleport as much as you like; the timer starts the moment you act.