Pokemon Bank Is Free for a Limited Time to Transfer 3DS Pokemon to Pokemon Home

Pokemon Home is here! In addition to offering a variety of freebies, the basic premise of the new app is to offer one single place to store, transfer, and trade Pokemon across versions of the video game franchise. Notably, this means critters can now cross between Pokemon Sword and Shield and Let’s Go, Eevee and Pikachu. But this isn’t the first time that Pokemon has had a similar system in place, and Home‘s immediate predecessor, Pokemon Bank for the Nintendo 3DS, is free for a limited time to allow folks to transfer stuff through to the new system.

This isn’t exactly news, of course. When the first significant details were announced for Pokemon Home, it was revealed that Pokemon Bank would be free for a month. Pokemon Bank, if you’re not familiar, traditionally has a yearly subscription for a nominal fee associated with it. If you’re at all confused, you can more on how to transfer Pokemon over to Pokemon Home right here.

It’s also worth noting here that while Pokemon Bank itself might be briefly free, the ability to trade between Bank and Home is not itself free; it’s part of Home‘s premium plan. This just means people that want to transfer from the old system to the new won’t have to pay for two subscriptions at the same time. At least, for now.

“To celebrate the release of Pokémon HOME, Pokémon Bank and Poké Transporter will be available at no cost for a one-month period after Pokémon HOME is released,” the Pokemon Company International said at the time. “Trainers will be able to bring over Pokémon from various Pokémon series games using Pokémon Bank and Poké Transporter. Once they have their Pokémon in Pokémon Bank, Trainers will then be able to move the Pokémon to Pokémon HOME.”

What do you think of Pokemon Home so far? Do you think you’ll be using it on the regular? Let us know in the comments, or hit me up directly on Twitter at @rollinbishop to talk all things gaming!

Pokemon Home is currently available for Nintendo Switch, Android, and iOS. You can check out all of our previous coverage of the new storage and transfer system for the Pokemon video games right here.