Pokémon Go Appraisal And CP Meaning Explained - Eurogamer

Pokémon Go CP explained: What is CP and how is CP calculated?

CP, or Combat Points, is a measure of how strong your Pokémon will be in battle against another Pokémon, and is actually a combination of several hidden stats. Each Pokémon in Pokémon Go has a set of Base Stats for Attack, Defence, and Stamina, along with a hidden Level and a hidden modifier for those Base Stats, known as a Pokémon's IVs.

It's not worth going into too much detail on how all of those stats work (you can read the nitty gritty details over at this fan-run wiki) but they can essentially be explained with a nice little analogy about dogs:

Greyhounds, often used for dog racing, are a naturally fast breed of dog. Bulldogs, not so fast. Just like Greyhounds are naturally speedy, Dragonites, as a Pokémon species, have naturally high Attack - or, in other words, a naturally high Base Stat for Attack - contrast that with Machokes which, despite having decent Attack, are somewhat puny by comparison.

However, every now and then you might get a Greyhound that is so slow, and a Bulldog that is so fast, that out of these two individual dogs the Bulldog is actually faster.

So, in Pokémon Go, you might get such a naturally low-Attack Dragonite, and naturally high-Attack Machoke, that you'll hit the point where the Machoke actually has a higher overall Attack than the Dragonite. That's because the Individual Values of the Machoke - basically its genes - are considerably stronger than those of the Dragonite.

In Pokémon Go, IVs are given a value out of 15 for each stat, so a spread of 15/15/15 across Attack, Defence, and Stamina would be considered perfect IVs.

Finally, you have the Pokémon Level. In brief, a Pokémon Level is like how hard the Pokémon has been training, so again, a more well-trained Machoke with a higher Level might have an overall higher Attack than an untrained Dragonite.

Raising a Pokémon's Level is easy enough - each time you use the Power Up function in-game, it raises that Pokémon by half a level. Note that the Level always caps out at a maximum of 1.5 Levels above your own Trainer Level, but that maximum does still increase alongside your Trainer Level over time.

You can get a rough estimate of a Pokémon's Level from the white curved bar above its head - a bar all the way to the right means the Pokémon is at its current maximum Level, and a bar all the way to the left means it's at its minimum Level, which is always Level 1.

So, a combination of a Pokémon's hidden Base Stats, IVs, and Level are what dictate its CP - the higher the better, but remember that just because that Drowzee you caught has higher CP than your old one, that doesn't necessarily mean it's stronger. It might just be a higher Level.

The Lunar New Year event has returned for 2026! Why not try out the 'What's Your Favourite?' photo feature? Make sure you're keeping up with the Precious Paths quest. There's a lot to do in Pokémon Go outside of the current event! From the Go Battle League, Remote Trading, PokéStop Showcase, Routes and Max Battles. Don't forget to catch rare Pokémon while you're at it.