Pokemon: Every Poke Ball ranked from worst to best

Poké Balls are vital in the world of Pokémon, but not all are created equal

Ryan Woodrow | Oct 14, 2023

Pokemon: Every Poke Ball ranked from worst to best /

We spend plenty of time picking out our team of Pokémon and customizing all their stats and moves, but we don’t always consider the very first step in the process: actually catching them. There is a massive array of different Poké Balls trainers can choose from when catching their future partners and a variety of attitudes as to what is the right Poké Ball in each situation.

Some people just go for whatever has the highest possible catch rate, others pick something consistent and reliable, and some people pick whatever ball matches the color of the Pokémon they’re trying to catch.

We’ve decided to finally put the argument to bed, ranking all 32 unique Poké Balls that have ever existed in the main series of Pokémon games, taking into account their abilities, usefulness, and overall design.

Check out more of our Pokémon rankings with the best Fire Pokémon, best Fairy Pokémon, and best Steel Pokémon.

Strange Ball

Technically the newest Pokéball to be added as of Generation 9, but also the least boring as it’s just a bit of a cop out. This is the ball that any Pokémon will go into if their original Poké Ball isn’t modeled in the destination game. For the most part, this means that the cool-looking Hisui balls from Pokémon Legends: Arceus get erased with something much less interesting.

Park Ball

While these balls are actually just as powerful as a Master Ball with a 100% catch rate, they’re only useful in one location – the Pal Park in the Generation 4 games. They’re otherwise unobtainable, making them almost completely useless.

Sport Ball

Once again, you only get to use these balls in narrow circumstances – in this case is’ during Johto’s bug-catching contest. Aside from the white mark on the top, they are identical to a normal Poké Ball, making them quite unremarkable.

Safari Ball

The Safari Zone is a big pain in most games that it features, and the Safari Ball is a big part as to why. With just a 1x catch rate – the same as a basic Poké Ball – you are given no advantage when it comes to catching the rare Pokémon that reside in these zones.

Love Ball

The Love Ball looks really nice and seems great when you realize it can get an 8x catch rate on some Pokémon, however, its use case is so narrow as to be entirely irrelevant. Love Balls can only get the 8x catch rate if a Pokémon is both the same species and opposite gender of your active Pokémon.

On top of that, in Generation 2 – where it was introduced – it’s programmed incorrectly, so the Pokémon actually have to be the same gender for it to work.

Premier Ball

This is an insult of a Poké Ball. When you buy 10 or more of any ball at a Poké Mart, you get a bonus Premier Ball – a 1x catch rate ball that doesn’t even look as nice as a regular Poké Ball. They say you should never look a gift horse in the mouth, but this is a terrible gift – one extra of the Poké Ball I was actually buying would be much nicer, but that’d be too much apparently.

Nest Ball

If you got the Nest Ball in the early game then it might be quite good, but usually by the time you have your hands on a Nest Ball, you have access to balls that can do its job better than it. The way this works is that it has increased catch rates on low-level Pokémon, ranging from 1.2x on a Level 29 Pokémon, to a 4x catch rate on a Level 1 ‘mon.

The problem is, by the time you can buy Nest Balls, you’d be far better off just using Quick Balls if you’re planning to go back and catch some low-level Pokémon.

Moon Ball

The Moon Ball earns some points because it looks cool, but it’s also terrible functionally. It has a 4x catch rate on Pokémon that can evolved via the use of a Moon Stone. In case you were curious, that makes for a grand total of six evolution lines that can make use of it. It gets better though as like the Love Ball, it didn’t work at all in Generation 2, always having a 1x modifier.

Heal Ball

This is often the first special type of Poké Ball you’ll be able to use in Pokémon games, which is good because they become useless the moment you own 6 or more Pokémon. They have a 1x catch rate, but instantly heal the Pokémon caught inside. The thing is, once you have 6 Pokémon they go into your boxes which, prior to Generation 8, instantly heals them anyway.

Origin Ball

This is a ball that you can’t technically use in any of the games as it’s only for a story event in Pokémon Legends: Arceus, but it climbs this high because it looks amazing. The red crystalline pattern is a thing of beauty, and it has cool lore as a ball designed to catch Dialga and Palkia.

Heavy Ball

Heavy Balls can be awesome when used on the right Pokémon, giving potentially huge boosts on the catch rates of the heaviest Pokémon in existence. However, most of them are fully evolved beasts you won’t actually encounter on your journey. Plus, using it on a light Pokémon will actually give you a negative modifier – one of the only ball types to do so.

Gigaton Ball

The Gigaton Ball and its variants don’t look as good as anything else in Pokémon Legends: Arceus, but they are quite useful. They don’t fly very far but give a 2.75x catch rate boost if you use them on a Pokémon that doesn’t detect you. While a regular Ultra Ball is arguably more useful because of the throw distance, this ball plays perfectly into Legends’ unique gameplay.

Fast Ball

Initially, the Fast Ball was as bad as the Moon Ball, only catching Pokémon that could flee from battle. However, it was changed in later Generations and has since become much better, offering a 4x catch rate on any Pokémon with speed greater than 100. It’s still limited to a select group of Pokémon, but at least it casts quite a wide net.

Cherish Ball

This is the best ball that you can’t actually obtain in a game. These balls are exclusively used for Pokémon given away in events, and they look great for it. It’s one of the only balls to play around with the standard shape, and it makes any Pokémon inside it feel more special, as events should.

Poké Ball

Roughly halfway through the list feels like the appropriate place for the Poké Ball. Sure, it’s a bog standard 1x catch rate, but its design is simply iconic. People who don’t know Pokémon still recognize that symbol – it’s perhaps second only to Pikachu as the most well-known piece of Pokémon iconography, and it earns its keep for that alone.

Level Ball

The Level Ball is a lot like if the Nest Ball was actually good. Its catch rate is based on how the opposing Pokémon’s level compares to your own. Simply being a higher level than the target makes it as good as an Ultra Ball with a 2x catch rate, but that can be boosted to as high as 8x if your level is quadruple that of the target, making it the best for catching low-level Pokémon in the late game.

Great Ball

Another of the standard balls, Great Balls is often the forgotten middle child of the standard progression. They offer a 1.5x catch rate, which isn’t all that great, but the design work carries it to a solid place in this list.

Repeat Ball

The Repeat Ball’s usage can be a bit narrow, but they come in clutch in specific scenarios. While it’s unlike that you’ll be looking to catch repeat Pokémon while filling up your Pokédex, in other post-game activities like shiny hunting, a reliable 3.5x catch rate can be very helpful indeed.

Lure Ball

Throughout Pokémon history, there are plenty of rare Pokémon that can only be caught through fishing. Even more so Game Freak seemed obsessed for many years with inserting Pokémon that have just a 1% encounter rate at fishing spots. That makes the 4x modifier for fishing all the more helpful, so you won’t risk losing your catch and having to start all over again.

Dive Ball

The Dive Ball is very similar to the Lure Ball, and weighing the pros and cons puts them about level. The lower 3.5x catch rate is a con, but the fact that it works on Pokémon encountered while surfing and diving as well as fishing is a big pro. The only problem is that the Net Ball does a far better job than both balls combined.

Dream Ball

For many years, the Dream Ball’s beautiful design was all it had going for it, as it could only be used in the Entralink of the Generation 5 games. However, as of Generation 8, it has become a lot better, offering a 4x modifier to a sleeping Pokémon. Giving sleep is a status condition that already boosts a Pokémon’s catch rate, throwing out a Dream Ball is a perfect choice.

Jet Ball

Despite a lower catch rate, the long throw range of the Jet Ball and its counterparts makes it a great ball to use in any situation in Pokémon Legends: Arceus – plus it looks quite nice too.

Beast Ball

The Beast Ball is this high because it looks amazing, it has nothing to do with how useful it is. The wormhole design combined with the extra flares on the outside of the ball make it one of the best to look at. A 5x boost on Ultra Beasts is very good, but the 0.1x negative boost on any non-Ultra Beast also makes it the ultimate brag to catch something in them.

Friend Ball

While its basic 1x catch rate isn’t anything special, its extra ability is one of the best out there, as it automatically sets a Pokémon’s friendship rating to 200 out of a maximum possible 255. As there are many Pokémon that can only evolve via high friendship, catching one of them in a Friend Ball saves you so much time and effort.

Hisuian Poké Ball

The wooden zipper style of Poké Ball is such a genius piece of design that we absolutely adore and it works for all the basic Poké Ball designs. The technology-free land of Hisui is such an enthralling setting and it’s details like this design that make it feel so special.

Luxury Ball

One of the nicest-looking Poké Balls, the Luxury Ball is a great ball to try and catch things like legendaries in for bragging rights. It has just the basic 1x catch rate but with the added effect of doubling the rate at which friendship increases, making it arguably just as good as the Friend Ball.

Net Ball

Giving a 3.5x modifier on any Water of Bug-type Pokémon is a fantastic boost that can be used in so many different scenarios. There are more Water-types in the Pokédex than any other type, so despite a limited pool of effective Pokémon, that pool is about as big as it can possibly be. Not to mention that it’s a lovely piece of design work too.

Ultra Ball

It’s the easiest to obtain and the most reliable Poké Ball out there. No matter how you play Pokémon, chances are you have a solid stock of these in your inventory at all times. The flat 2x catch rate may not be the best, but the fact that it applies regardless of any other conditions makes it a must-have.

Timer Ball

When trying to catch legendary Pokémon, chances are the battle will drag on for a while unless you get very lucky, which makes Timer Balls perfect. After 10 turns have passed in battle it will have a 4x catch modifier, which is the best you can expect to consistently get on legendary Pokémon.

Master Ball

It would feel like a cop-out to give the Master Ball the top spot, but at the same time, we can’t put it any lower than the top three. The Master Ball of course is statistically the best ball, never failing to catch a Pokémon, but the fact that you can only get one or two per save file is a massive limitation. The truth of Master Balls is that most experienced players never use them, we always hold them in reserve for “the right time” that never comes.

Quick Ball

There’s no reason not to throw out a Quick Ball on the first turn of every wild Pokémon battle, including against legendaries. That 5x boost on the first turn of battle is incredible and reliably catches most Pokemon without the need to even battle them properly. As soon as they become available in a game, you should buy up a lot of them to save yourself all the time and effort in the world.

Dusk Ball

Along with a strong design, the Dusk Ball is one of the most easy to use Poké Balls and you should treat them like they’re just as valuable as your stock of Ultra Balls. The Dusk Ball gives you a 3x catch rate boost if used in a cave or at night. These conditions are so easy to fulfill that the Dusk Ball essentially acts as a better Ultra Ball and you should always have plenty for those rare occasions that a Quick Ball doesn’t do the trick.

Published Oct 14, 2023

RYAN WOODROW

Ryan Woodrow is Guides Editor for GLHF based in London, England. He has a particular love for JRPGs and the stories they tell. His all-time favorite JRPGs are the Xenoblade Chronicles games because of the highly emotive and philosophy-driven stories that hold great meaning. Other JRPGs he loves in the genre are Persona 5 Royal, Octopath Traveler, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Nier Automata, and Pokémon. He also regularly dives deep into the indie scene trying to find hidden gems and innovative ideas. Some of his favorite indie games include FTL: Faster Than Light, Thomas Was Alone, Moonlighter, Phantom Abyss, and Towerfall Ascension. More of his favorite games are Minecraft, Super Mario Odyssey, Stardew Valley, Skyrim, and XCOM 2. He has a first-class degree in Games Studies from Staffordshire University and has written for several sites such as USA Today's ForTheWin, Game Rant, The Sun, and KeenGamer. Email: ryan.woodrow@glhf.gg