How this instrument works
Evolving a Pokemon in Pokemon GO costs a fixed amount of species-specific candy and grants a flat 500 XP per evolution, regardless of which Pokemon it is or how much candy that species costs to evolve. That flat reward is exactly why "mass evolution" runs — stockpiling candy for a cheap-to-evolve species like Weedle, Caterpie, or Pidgey and evolving a large batch at once — are a well-known, efficient way to gain experience quickly: the XP per evolution doesn't scale with candy cost, so cheaper species let you rack up more evolutions, and therefore more XP, from the same candy budget.
A Lucky Egg is a consumable item that doubles all XP earned for 30 minutes after activation, and it stacks straightforwardly with evolution XP: 500 XP per evolution becomes 1,000 with a Lucky Egg running. That's the entire mechanic — no per-species multiplier table is involved, which is a genuine simplification versus assuming every Pokemon's evolution has its own bespoke XP value.
This calculator answers the practical planning question directly: given how much candy you have and how much a single evolution of that species costs, how many evolutions can you actually do, and how much XP will that batch earn (with or without a Lucky Egg running)?
- Enter Candy you have — your current candy count for the species you're planning to evolve.
- Enter Candy needed for one evolution — the species-specific cost shown in-game for that evolution.
- Toggle Lucky Egg active? — check this if you're timing the evolutions inside a Lucky Egg's 30-minute window.
- Read Pokemon you can evolve — how many complete evolutions your candy stock allows (leftover candy that isn't enough for one more evolution is simply unused).
- Read Total XP from evolving — 500 XP per evolution, or 1,000 with a Lucky Egg active.
Worked example — 100 candy, 25 per evolution
You have 100 candy for a species that costs 25 candy per evolution: evolutions = floor(100/25) = 4 exactly, with none left over. Without a Lucky Egg, that's 4 x 500 = 2,000 XP. Time the same 4 evolutions inside a Lucky Egg's 30-minute window and XP doubles to 4 x 1,000 = 4,000 XP for the identical candy spend — the entire benefit of stacking evolutions into the Lucky Egg window.
An uneven case shows the rounding-down clearly: 83 candy at 12 candy per evolution gives 83/12 = 6.9166..., which floors to 6 complete evolutions, leaving 11 candy unused — not quite enough for a 7th. Those 6 evolutions still earn 6 x 500 = 3,000 XP (or 6,000 with a Lucky Egg); the leftover 11 candy simply carries forward toward your next evolution once you catch or hatch more of that species.
Questions
Does every Pokemon give the same XP for evolving?
Yes — evolving grants a flat 500 XP regardless of species or how much candy that species costs to evolve. That's exactly why cheap-to-evolve species (commonly Weedle, Caterpie, Pidgey, and similar low-candy-cost Pokemon) are the go-to choice for XP-farming runs: the same candy budget buys more evolutions, and therefore more total XP, when each individual evolution costs less candy.
How long does a Lucky Egg's XP boost last?
30 minutes from the moment you activate it, doubling all XP earned during that window — not just from evolutions, but from catches, throws, raids, and everything else that grants XP. That's why experienced players stockpile evolution-ready candy beforehand and then evolve everything in a fast burst once the Lucky Egg is running, to pack as many doubled-XP evolutions as possible into the 30 minutes.
What happens to leftover candy that isn't enough for another evolution?
It simply carries over — nothing is lost or wasted. The calculator rounds evolutions down to the nearest whole number (you can't evolve a fraction of a Pokemon), and any remaining candy just sits in your total until you have enough for the next evolution, whether from catching, hatching, transferring, or walking with that species.
Does a Lucky Egg affect how much candy an evolution costs?
No — a Lucky Egg only affects XP, doubling it for 30 minutes. It has no effect on candy cost, Stardust cost, or any other resource an evolution requires; the candy math (how many evolutions your candy stock allows) is identical with or without a Lucky Egg active.
Is 500 XP per evolution an official, documented number?
It's Niantic's long-standing, widely documented base value for a standard evolution, consistently reported across community wikis and guides and confirmed by countless players' own in-game XP counters. Some special evolution methods (certain event evolutions, for example) have occasionally carried bonus XP on top of the base amount, but the standard 500 (1,000 with a Lucky Egg) figure this calculator uses is the baseline that applies to ordinary candy-based evolutions.