Ranked at peak, forms listedgames · anime · dex entries
Gods,CatchableThe Pokémon power ranking
Pokémon ships two official power rankings and both of them are wrong. The base stat total prices competitive viability, which is why Slaking outscores every pseudo-legendary in the game and still cannot be used. The Pokédex prices awe, which is why a snail is on record as hotter than the surface of the sun. Neither is evidence. Every entry here is ranked from what was actually demonstrated, and the printed numbers appear only where the gap between them is the interesting part.
The short answer
The strongest is Arceus, and the reason is not close: the Sinnoh creation myth has it shaping the world and producing the beings who run time, space and antimatter, and Legends Arceus puts you in front of it. The joke the series never acknowledges is that this is a catchable encounter with a level cap, and the thing that made the universe has a stat line forty points above a lab experiment.
Continuity
Medium
EvidenceCrowdΔ
Tier 00 · not on the scale
The dex says so
Enormous printed claims with nothing behind them. These are not modest Pokémon — on paper they are among the most destructive things in the series. They are here because the paper is all there is.
The dex puts its body temperature at 18,000 °F, which is roughly twice the surface of the sun. Nothing in any game, episode or film has ever treated it as dangerous to stand next to. It is the cleanest example on this site of a stated figure that the fiction itself does not believe: the number exists to sound enormous, and every subsequent appearance quietly ignores it.
statedPokémon Sapphire · Pokédex entry, Magcargo
Its body temperature is given as about 18,000 degrees Fahrenheit. — 2002
statedPokémon Diamond · Pokédex entry, Magcargo
The temperature claim is repeated in a later generation rather than corrected. — 2006
Its entries describe a creature that hides in a target's shadow and waits for the chance to take their life, and several generations repeat it without softening. Then it turns up in the anime as a nuisance that pulls faces. The gap between the two is not a continuity problem — it is the dex being written to a different brief than the show.
statedPokémon Silver · Pokédex entry, Gengar
Described as slipping into its prey's shadow and waiting for a chance to take their life. — 1999
A balloon that, by its own entry, is mistaken for a toy by children who then go missing. It is one of the more alarming things printed in a children's game, and it is also the whole feat: no scene, no body, no consequence anywhere in the series. Pure statement.
statedPokémon HeartGold · Pokédex entry, Drifloon
Children who mistake it for a balloon and hold on to it are said to go missing. — 2009
Tier 01 · apex
They made the board
Time, space, antimatter and the world itself. Each of these is described as a precondition for the setting rather than a resident of it, and each has still been fought and caught.
The Original Oneas the myth describes it, before anything else existed
Catchable encountera stat total of 720, and one ball
gamesgame
KillsNo confirmed kills.
Sinnoh's creation myth has it hatching from an egg in a void and shaping the world, then producing the trio that holds time, space and antimatter apart. Legends Arceus makes the myth playable and puts it in front of you at the end. Everything above regional scale in this series is downstream of it, and it can be caught.
statedPokémon Diamond · Canalave
Canalave's myth describes it shaping the world and creating the beings that govern time and space. — 2006
statedPokémon Platinum · 2008
The Distortion World and the creation trio are presented as its work.
shownPokémon Legends: Arceus · 2022
Appears directly at the end of the game as an encounter.
Origin Formeits shape in the Distortion World, where it is not constrained
gamesgame
KillsNo confirmed kills.
Banished out of the world for its violence, and given a dimension of its own to be banished into. In Platinum it does not merely live in the Distortion World — it drags Cyrus there bodily, and gravity, geometry and falling all stop behaving on the way in. Second because the eviction stuck: it rules the place it was sent to, which is a smaller claim than making the place.
shownPokémon Platinum · Distortion World
Pulls Cyrus into the Distortion World, which does not obey ordinary gravity or geometry. — 2008
statedPokémon Diamond · Pokédex entry, Giratina
Said to have been banished for its violence into a world on the reverse side. — 2006
Time is said to have begun moving when it was born, which is a claim about the setting rather than about a fight, and it is the whole of the printed case for it. What the games hand it beyond that is Roar of Time, a move that costs the user a turn of recovery — the mechanics agreeing, quietly, that the thing is expensive to use.
statedPokémon Pearl · Pokédex entry, Dialga
Time is said to have begun moving when Dialga was born. — 2006
shownPokémon Platinum · Spear Pillar
Summoned by the Red Chain at Spear Pillar as one of the two forces Cyrus intends to rebuild reality with. — 2008
The counterpart claim, one axis over: it is said to live in a gap between dimensions and to hold space itself stable. Ranked below Dialga on a thin margin and stated as such — the two are written as equals, and the tie is broken only by time being the axis the series actually shows being interfered with.
statedPokémon Pearl · Pokédex entry, Palkia
Said to dwell in a gap between dimensions, with space distorting where it goes. — 2006
shownPokémon Platinum · Spear Pillar
Summoned alongside Dialga at Spear Pillar by the Red Chain. — 2008
It arrived in a meteor, and the energy the whole Galar region runs on is leaking out of it. Left alone it would have consumed the region entirely, and the fight against its Eternamax form is the one boss in the series the game refuses to let you win conventionally — you cannot catch it, cannot catch it in that state, and need Hop beside you with the second of the two relics that call Zacian and Zamazenta. Contested because its stat total of 1125 is the highest ever printed and is exactly the kind of number this page distrusts.
shownPokémon Sword · 2019
Its energy is the source of the Dynamax phenomenon across the whole region.
shownPokémon Shield · 2019
The Eternamax form cannot be caught; the fight needs Zacian and Zamazenta, summoned by the player and Hop.
Tier 02 · the greats
They rewrote the weather, or the light
Continental at minimum. The tier above made the world; these arrived afterwards and altered it, which is the whole of the difference.
Dusk Mane / Dawn Wingsfused with Solgaleo or Lunala
Ultra Necrozmathe fully restored state, after taking the light back
gamesgame
KillsNo confirmed kills.
A whole civilisation lost its light to this. Ultra Megalopolis is dark because Necrozma took the light out of it, and the Ultra Recon Squad are refugees from that fact rather than mystics describing it. When it takes Solgaleo or Lunala as a host and goes Ultra, the game changes its type chart and its music and stops pretending this is a normal fight.
statedPokémon Ultra Sun · Ultra Megalopolis
Ultra Megalopolis is permanently dark because Necrozma drained its light. — 2017
shownPokémon Ultra Moon · 2017
Takes Solgaleo or Lunala as a host and transforms into Ultra Necrozma.
Mega Rayquazareached with no Mega Stone — it swallows the meteorite instead
gamesgamefilm
KillsNo confirmed kills.
Kyogre and Groudon are ranked below it for one reason: when the two of them fight, Rayquaza is what stops the fight. Then Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire went further and had it intercept a meteoid on a collision course with the planet, in the upper atmosphere, with a trainer riding it. Regional weather is the floor of what it does, not the ceiling.
shownPokémon Emerald · 2004
Ends the confrontation between Kyogre and Groudon that neither side could resolve.
shownPokémon Omega Ruby · Delta Episode
Mega Evolves and destroys an incoming meteoid above the atmosphere in the Delta Episode. — 2014
Primal Kyogrethe state reached through Alpha Sapphire's orb
gamesgame
KillsNo confirmed kills.
The sea is bigger because of it. Its stated role is having expanded the oceans, and when Archie wakes it the rain over Hoenn does not behave like weather — it is a permanent state the region cannot come out of without the other half of the pair or the thing above them both.
statedPokémon Sapphire · Pokédex entry, Kyogre
Said to have widened the sea by bringing down heavy rain. — 2002
statedPokémon Alpha Sapphire · 2014
Primal Reversion produces heavy rain that other weather moves cannot lift, reported in battle as "There is no relief from this heavy rain!"
Primal Groudonthe state reached through Omega Ruby's orb
gamesgame
KillsNo confirmed kills.
Same claim, opposite sign, and one place lower only because the drought is the easier of the two disasters to survive. Continents are attributed to it, and Primal Groudon's sunlight is written the same way Kyogre's rain is: not a forecast but a condition.
statedPokémon Ruby · Pokédex entry, Groudon
Said to have expanded the continents through drought and volcanic activity. — 2002
statedPokémon Omega Ruby · 2014
Primal Reversion produces harsh sunlight that other weather moves cannot lessen, reported in battle as "The extremely harsh sunlight was not lessened at all!"
Dr. Fuji and the New Island research staffdestroys the laboratory within moments of wakingPokémon: The First Movie 1998
Ash Ketchumpetrified in the crossfire; the clones' tears undo it minutes laterPokémon: The First Movie 1998 · undone
Everything else on this page is a force of nature or a myth. Mewtwo is the only entry that was made deliberately, escaped, and killed the people who made it — it brings the laboratory down the moment it understands what it is. In the first film it then clones a set of trainers' Pokémon, wipes the memory of every human who witnessed the island, and turns Ash to stone in the crossfire. Its reach is one island and one lab — the smallest arena anyone in this tier has been measured in, and the reason it sits at the bottom of it.
shownPokémon: The First Movie · 1998
Destroys the laboratory and its staff on waking, then clones a set of Pokémon and erases the witnesses' memories.
statedPokémon Red · Cinnabar mansion journals
Described as created by gene-splicing research, with the Cinnabar mansion journals as the record. — 1996
Terastal Forma crystal shell raised on sensing danger, priced at 600
Stellar Formthe state the rank is argued from, priced at 700
gamesgamecontested
KillsNo confirmed kills.
Paldea's entire battle mechanic comes out of this animal. Terastallizing changes what type a Pokémon is, and Scarlet names Terapagos as the source of the phenomenon outright — a region-wide rewrite of how a fight works, credited to one creature rather than to a myth. Its own generation then does the thing this page exists to point at: the same Pokémon is assigned 450, then 600, then 700 across three forms, so the number tracks which part of the story it is in rather than anything about the animal. Violet adds the strangest line of all and says it went extinct.
statedPokémon Scarlet · Pokédex entry, Terapagos
"Terapagos protects itself using its power to transform energy into hard crystals. This Pokémon is the source of the Terastal phenomenon." — 2022
statedPokémon Violet · Pokédex entry, Terapagos
"It's thought that this Pokémon lived in ancient Paldea until it got caught in seismic shifts and went extinct." — 2022
statedPokémon Scarlet and Violet: The Indigo Disk · 2023
Its three forms carry base stat totals of 450, 600 and 700.
Tier 03 · everyone else you'd name
Beaten by a teenager
A demonstrated feat at regional scale or better, and a loss to a child carrying six animals in their pocket.
Two halves of one dragon, and the games give both the identical figure — 680 apiece, for a pair whose entire point is that they stand for opposite principles. The dex is franker still. Black 2 says Reshiram can scorch the world with fire and helps those who want to build a world of truth, then says Zekrom can scorch the world with lightning and assists those who want to build an ideal world: one sentence, printed twice, with a single noun changed each time. Nothing else on this page shows so plainly that the entries are written to a theme rather than taken from a measurement. They are ranked as one because the fiction never separates them, and above the thing that can swallow either — which the same system prices twenty points lower.
statedPokémon Black 2 · Pokédex entry, Reshiram
"This legendary Pokémon can scorch the world with fire. It helps those who want to build a world of truth." — Reshiram — 2012
statedPokémon Black 2 · Pokédex entry, Zekrom
"This legendary Pokémon can scorch the world with lightning. It assists those who want to build an ideal world." — Zekrom — 2012
statedPokémon Black · 2010
Both are assigned a base stat total of 680; Kyurem, which absorbs either of them, is assigned 660.
Three Pokémon died in the fire at the Brass Tower and Ho-Oh brought all three back. That is the single most concrete thing any entry on this page has done, and it is a resurrection rather than a demolition — worth more than it looks on a list that mostly measures how much of a map somebody removed.
statedPokémon Gold · Brass Tower
Revived the three Pokémon that died in the Brass Tower fire, producing Raikou, Entei and Suicune. — 1999
Its dex line — that a flick of its wings can bring on a storm lasting forty days — is the sort of claim this page normally files under Tier 00. It gets ranked because the second film actually shows the weather system: the whole climate of the Orange Islands goes wrong and only Lugia can put it back.
statedPokémon Diamond · Pokédex entry, Lugia
A storm lasting forty days is attributed to a single movement of its wings. — 2006
shownPokémon: The Movie 2000 · 1999
The global weather disruption is resolved only by Lugia's intervention.
Black or White Kyuremfused with Zekrom or Reshiram
gamesgame
KillsNo confirmed kills.
What is left over when the original dragon split, and it works by taking the other pieces back. Absorbing Reshiram or Zekrom is not a power-up in the usual sense — the game presents it as a partial reassembly of something that used to be whole, and the fused forms are what that looks like when it is only half done.
shownPokémon Black 2 · 2012
Absorbs Zekrom or Reshiram to form Black or White Kyurem.
statedPokémon Black · Pokédex entry, Kyurem
Described as the remainder of an original dragon that split in two. — 2010
every living thing, at the end of its lifestated in the dex, and never once depictedPokémon Y 2013
Its entry states that when its life ends it takes the life energy of every living thing with it, and returns to a cocoon. That is the largest death toll claimed by anything in the series. It is contested and ranked here rather than in the tier above for the reason this whole page exists: it has never been shown doing it once.
statedPokémon Y · Pokédex entry, Yveltal
When its life ends it absorbs the life energy of every living thing and returns to a cocoon. — 2013
shownPokémon Y · 2013
Fought and caught as the box legendary without the absorption ever occurring.
Eternal life, given away. It is the counterweight to Yveltal in every sense including the evidentiary one — both are enormous printed claims with a caught legendary at the end of them — and it is one place higher only because sharing life is a thing the games let it visibly do in battle, and ending all life is not.
statedPokémon X · Pokédex entry, Xerneas
Said to be able to share eternal life. — 2013
shownPokémon X · Geosenge
Drained of its life force beneath Geosenge to power Lysandre's ultimate weapon, which the player watches fire. — 2013
Complete Formeassembled from 100% of its cells, in response to a crisis
gamesgame
KillsNo confirmed kills.
It is the ecosystem's response mechanism, and it assembles out of cells distributed across the region when something has gone badly enough wrong. The Complete Forme exists specifically as an answer to Xerneas and Yveltal going too far, which makes it the only entry here whose stated job is policing other entries on this list.
shownPokémon Sun · 2016
Assembles from distributed cells into Complete Forme, described as a response to ecological crisis.
The dex credits it with dragging the continents into position with ropes, which would put it near the top of this page if anything supported it. In the games it is a slow, sluggish encounter with an ability that halves its own attack for five turns. Contested because the distance between the claim and the creature is the widest on this page — wider than Magcargo's, because Regigigas is at least ranked.
statedPokémon Diamond · Pokédex entry, Regigigas
Said to have towed continents into place using ropes. — 2006
shownPokémon Platinum · Snowpoint Temple
Encountered at Snowpoint Temple with the Slow Start ability halving its attack and speed for five turns. — 2008
Everyone in the town sleeps and does not wake, and the cause is one Pokémon on the next island doing what it does involuntarily. Ranked for the mechanism rather than the magnitude: it is the rare entry whose effect is on minds at a settlement scale and whose own account of it is that it cannot help it.
statedPokémon Platinum · Pokédex entry, Darkrai
Afflicts those around it with nightmares to protect itself, and is said to mean no harm by it. — 2008
shownPokémon Platinum · Newmoon Island
Encountered on Newmoon Island as the cause of the Canalave sleeper's nightmares. — 2008
Attack Forme180 attack, 20 defence — the highest-variance line in the series
Defense and Speed Formesthe other two allocations of the same budget
gamesgame
KillsNo confirmed kills.
A virus that arrived in a rock from space and reorganised itself into something with four bodies to choose from. Its Attack Forme carries one of the highest offensive stats printed and effectively no defence, which is the closest the series gets to admitting a stat total is a budget rather than a measurement.
statedPokémon Ruby · Pokédex entry, Deoxys
Described as a space virus mutated by exposure to a laser, arriving via meteorite. — 2002
shownPokémon Platinum · Veilstone meteorites
Changes Forme at the Veilstone meteorites, redistributing the same stat budget. — 2008
Mewtwo exists because someone found Mew and worked from it, which makes Mew the most consequential entry on this page by inheritance and one of the least demonstrated by feat. It is stated to carry the genetic material of every Pokémon. It has been shown to be very hard to find. Last in the ranking, and contested, because those are not the same kind of sentence and this list only counts one of them.
statedPokémon Red · Cinnabar mansion journals
The Cinnabar journals record Mew as the source organism from which Mewtwo was produced. — 1996
statedPokémon Ruby · Pokédex entry, Mew
Said to hold the genetic composition of all Pokémon. — 2002