Pokémon Pull Rate Calculator

How do you calculate Pokémon pull rates?
Pull rates come from tracking large sample sizes of opened packs (often thousands, via places like TCGplayer's authentication centre) and recording how often each card or rarity tier appears. From there, the odds of pulling at least one hit across multiple packs are calculated using basic probability: 1 minus the chance of not pulling it in every single pack.

What's the pull rate for a booster box vs a single pack?
A single pack gives you one shot at the printed odds — often 1 in 80 or higher for a specific SIR. A booster box (36 packs) stacks those odds together, so while any individual pack is still a long shot, opening a full box gives you a meaningfully better chance of pulling something from a given rarity tier overall.

How many packs do I need to open to guarantee a SIR?
There's no true "guarantee" with random pulls — even opening thousands of packs carries some (very small) chance of missing a specific card entirely. What you can calculate is the number of packs needed for a 50/50 shot, which is usually far higher than people expect — often several hundred packs for a single chase SIR.

Are pull rates the same for every set?
No — each set has its own printed odds, and even similar rarity tiers (like SIR) can vary noticeably between sets. That's why checking set-specific data matters more than relying on a general "SIR rate" across the whole game.

Does TCGplayer publish official pull rate data?
TCGplayer publishes pull-rate data based on tracked pack openings, which is the source used for the figures in this calculator. It's not data from Pokémon's official publisher, but it's one of the most widely referenced sources in the hobby for real-world pull odds.

What's the difference between "any SIR" odds and a specific card's odds?
"Any SIR" tells you the chance of pulling some Special Illustration Rare from that tier, regardless of which one. A specific card's odds are far lower, since that tier is usually split across several different cards — pulling a SIR is much easier than pulling the SIR you actually want.

How rare is a specific card in a specific set?
It depends entirely on the card and set — a mid-tier Double Rare might pull around 1 in 200, while a chase Special Illustration Rare in a hyped set can sit above 1 in 1,500. The calculator's card search is built specifically to answer this on a card-by-card basis.

Is a booster box guaranteed to have a hit?
Most modern booster boxes are structured so a Double Rare or better shows up in nearly every pack, but true chase-tier hits (SIRs, Mega Hyper Rares) are not guaranteed per box — some boxes will have none, others will have multiple.

What's the expected number of SIRs in a case?
This scales directly with pack count — a case (usually 6 boxes, 216 packs) multiplies the single-pack SIR rate by 216 to give an expected value, which the calculator shows directly as "Expected pulls" once you enter your pack count.

Are pull rates the same in every region?
Pull rates are generally consistent for a given English-language print run, but regional print differences and language-specific set variations can occasionally shift the numbers slightly — it's worth treating published rates as accurate for standard English releases specifically.