Pokémon card pull rates, explained

What a pull rate is

A pull rate is the chance of getting one specific card out of a booster pack. We show it as "1 in N packs", so a bigger number means a harder pull.

We also show it per box. A sealed booster box is 36 packs, so "1 in 1,440 packs" is about 1 in 40 boxes. Per box is easier to picture.

Nobody publishes the real odds

The Pokémon Company never releases pull rates for physical packs. Every number you see online, including ours, is an estimate.

These estimates come from people opening thousands of packs and counting what comes out. Treat them as a smart guide, not a promise.

How we work out the odds

There are two parts. First, how often that rarity shows up in a pack. Second, how many cards share that rarity in the full set.

Put them together and you get the odds for one specific card. If a Special Illustration Rare shows up about 1 in 45 packs and the set has 32 of them, then one specific one, like Umbreon ex, is about 1 in 1,440 packs.

We pull the full set list from a complete card catalog, so the count is right even for cards we have not added to our own pages yet.

Why chase cards can be a little harder

Our math assumes every card of the same rarity is equally likely. In real life, the biggest chase cards are often printed a touch less, so the true odds can be a bit harder than the estimate.

That is why we label how confident we are: high when a set has a large pack-opening study behind it, lower when we are leaning on the era's typical pack structure. We never call an estimate official.

Promos do not have a pull rate

Promo cards come from tins, boxes, and events, not booster packs. There is no pack pull rate for them, so we say that instead of inventing a number.

Same for a rare card with no data behind it yet. If we cannot estimate it honestly, we leave it blank.