Buddy Pokémon: Buddy Hearts, Levels and What Your Buddy Does for You

Your buddy is the one Pokémon that goes everywhere with you. It walks beside your avatar on the map, earns Candy as you move, and, if you give it a little attention each day, grows into a partner that helps in battle and occasionally brings you things.

Walking for Candy

The oldest buddy feature is simple: walk a set distance with a Pokémon as your buddy and you earn a Candy for its species. The distance depends on the species and is shown on the buddy screen. Most Pokémon fall into a handful of tiers, commonly 1, 3, 5 or 20 km per Candy: a very common Pokémon such as Magikarp is at the short end, while most Legendary and Mythical Pokémon sit at the long end.

Distance recorded by Adventure Sync while the app is closed counts too, once you've switched it on. Distance covered at driving or train speeds doesn't count, so buddy Candy comes from walking and other slow travel, not from a journey by car. Trainers who have reached the higher trainer levels can also turn up Candy XL from buddy walking, which matters once you start powering Pokémon up past level 40.

Buddy hearts: how your bond grows

Separate from Candy, your buddy earns hearts when you do things together. Each activity can only earn hearts a limited number of times per day, and there is an overall daily cap, so a few minutes every day beats one long session.

Activity	How to do it	Tip
Walk together	Cover 2 km with your buddy	Happens naturally on any walk or commute
Give a treat	Feed a berry or a Poffin from the buddy screen	Your buddy gets full after a few treats; come back later
Play together	Open the buddy view and play with your buddy	Takes seconds, easy to forget
Battle together	Use your buddy in a raid, Gym battle, Trainer Battle or against Team GO Rocket	One quick Rocket battle does the job
Take a snapshot	Photograph your buddy with GO Snapshot	The photo doesn't need to be a good one
Visit somewhere new	Spin a PokéStop or Gym you haven't visited before	A good excuse to vary your usual route

Doing several activities in a row lifts your buddy's mood. At its top mood, Excited, your buddy earns hearts faster. A Poffin is the shortcut: feeding one fills your buddy's appetite for a long time and makes it Excited straight away, so it's worth saving Poffins for a buddy you're pushing toward a new level.

The four buddy levels

Hearts add up toward four buddy levels, each needing more than the last:

1. Good Buddy, reached quickly once you start earning hearts.
2. Great Buddy, the first level that takes a few days of attention.
3. Ultra Buddy, a real commitment of regular play.
4. Best Buddy, the top level, which usually takes weeks of steady daily hearts.

Levels belong to the individual Pokémon, not the species. A buddy keeps its level when you swap it out and bring it back later, so you can raise a whole team of Best Buddies over time, one after another.

What your buddy does for you

As its level rises, your buddy starts pitching in. The buddy screen shows which perks each level unlocks, and details can change over time, so check there. The perks include:

• Presents: your buddy can occasionally find a present containing items.
• Souvenirs: small collectible keepsakes your buddy brings back from your travels, kept in its profile. They're purely for fun.
• Catch help: at higher levels your buddy can sometimes help when a wild Pokémon breaks out of a ball.
• A Best Buddy boost: while a Best Buddy is your active buddy, it gets a CP boost, which helps in raids and Gym battles, though not every battle mode uses it. It also earns a Best Buddy ribbon.

That boost makes a favourite raid attacker a good Best Buddy project: bring it along when you need one extra push.

Evolutions that need your buddy

Some Pokémon have evolutions tied to time spent as your buddy. Feebas, for example, needs to walk a set distance with you before it can evolve into Milotic. Eevee has two buddy-based routes: walking with it and then evolving it while it is still your buddy unlocks Espeon or Umbreon, depending on whether you evolve it by day or by night, which our day and night guide explains, and earning buddy hearts with it leads to Sylveon. Our Eevee guide covers every one of Eevee's evolution routes. Others, such as Pancham, need a task completed while they're your buddy, like catching a number of Pokémon of one type. Check the Pokémon's own page and the buddy screen in game for the current requirement.

Choosing a buddy

• The species you're short of Candy for, especially one you want to evolve or power up.
• A quick 1 km or 3 km species when you want fast, visible progress on a short walk.
• A Legendary if you have few other ways to earn its Candy; slow, but steady.
• Your best raid attacker, if you want to build it toward Best Buddy for the battle boost.
• A Pokémon you've already Mega Evolved, which can earn Mega Energy as you walk; see our Mega Evolution guide.

A two-minute daily buddy routine

1. Feed a treat and play with your buddy as soon as you open the game.
2. Take a quick snapshot.
3. Battle one Team GO Rocket member or join a raid with your buddy in your party.
4. Walk your normal route, adding one PokéStop you haven't spun before.

Repeated daily, that routine covers most of the heart activities in a couple of minutes. For how Candy, CP and evolving connect, see our core mechanics guide, or find more guides on the Trainer Hub homepage.