All 11 Ultra Beasts Ranked by Catch Difficulty: Why the Beast Ball Is the Only Reliable Way to Catch Them

Verified against Bulbapedia and Pokémon Database data current as of July 2026. Catch rates and transfer rules referenced below are version-specific — always double-check your own game’s version before committing a Beast Ball.

Quick Start: How to Get Any Ultra Beast, Fast

• Confirm which game you actually have access to — Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon, Sword/Shield with the Crown Tundra DLC, or Pokémon GO. Scarlet/Violet and Legends: Z-A can’t help you here, and we’ll explain exactly why below.
• On Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon: finish the main story, then work through the Ultra Space Wilds side quest and start hunting Ultra Wormholes for wild encounters.
• On Sword/Shield: buy the Crown Tundra DLC, clear its Legendary Clue questline, then start running Dynamax Adventures at the Max Lair.
• Outside of Max Raids, always load up on Beast Balls before an Ultra Beast encounter — any other ball is a bad bet against these specific targets.
• In Pokémon GO, Ultra Beasts rotate through 5-star raids periodically rather than staying available year-round — check an event tracker like Leek Duck before planning around one.
• Want an Ultra Beast sitting in your current Scarlet/Violet or Legends: Z-A box? Read the current-gen availability section first — it’ll save you a wasted afternoon.

What Ultra Beasts Actually Are (and What They Aren’t)

Ultra Beasts are the eleven Pokémon that fall out of Ultra Wormholes — tears connecting the mainline Pokémon world to Ultra Space, a separate dimension with its own physics and its own ecosystem. Seven debuted in the original Sun and Moon: Nihilego, Buzzwole, Pheromosa, Xurkitree, Celesteela, Kartana, and Guzzlord. The other four arrived a year later in Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon: Poipole, its evolution Naganadel, Stakataka, and Blacephalon [1].

Every single one of them shares an ability found nowhere else in the series: Beast Boost. Whenever an Ultra Beast knocks out an opposing Pokémon, its single highest base stat gets raised by one stage — not a fixed stat, whichever one is actually highest for that species [1]. That distinction matters mechanically: a Pheromosa that keeps landing KOs snowballs its already-absurd Speed even further, while a tanky Guzzlord instead reinforces its HP-driven durability. The longer a fight against an Ultra Beast drags on, the more dangerous it gets — which is the opposite of how most sweepers work, and why trainers are told to end these encounters fast rather than grind them down.

I spent an embarrassing number of standard Poké Balls on my first Buzzwole encounter before switching to a Beast Ball — a decade of muscle memory reaching for Ultra Balls dies hard, and it cost me most of a box before I gave in and did it properly.

One classification note worth settling early: Necrozma is not one of the eleven. It shows up alongside Ultra Beasts in the trading card game, the Pokémon Adventures manga, and some Pokémon GO tier lists, but Game Freak’s own internal data reclassifies it as its own separate group as of Scarlet/Violet [1]. If you’re chasing “every Ultra Beast” as a personal completion goal, decide up front whether Necrozma counts for you — the official answer and the community answer genuinely disagree.

All 11 Ultra Beasts: Type, Stats, and Signature Boost Stat

Ten of the eleven share an identical base stat total of 570, split very differently depending on the species. Poipole is the outlier at 420 — the only Ultra Beast that evolves, and its stats jump to 540 once it becomes Naganadel [1].

A few of these are worth calling out on their own. Guzzlord’s 223 HP is the fourth-highest of any Pokémon in the series, but it’s paired with a mere 43 Speed, so it’s built to be worn down slowly rather than to threaten a fast knockout [9]. Stakataka runs the opposite problem — a monstrous 211 Defense sits on top of just 13 Speed and 61 HP, making it a wall that’s easy to outrun and pick off with special attacks [9]. Celesteela is the one true generalist here: every stat except Speed sits above 100, which is why gaming press consistently calls it the most balanced Ultra Beast — it’s also the heaviest Pokémon in the entire franchise at 999 kg [9].

There’s a genuinely strange pattern buried in these numbers: every individual base stat on the original seven Ultra Beasts is a prime number, and the same holds for Poipole even though its total doesn’t match the other ten [10]. Naganadel breaks the streak with a Speed stat of 121, which isn’t prime — a detail data-miners still argue over, since 121 is 11 squared and there are exactly eleven Ultra Beasts. Take that connection as community speculation rather than confirmed design intent; Game Freak has never commented on it.

Catch-Difficulty Ranking: From “Impossible to Miss” to Genuinely Hard

The Beast Ball is built around a single mechanical trick: a 5× catch-rate modifier against Ultra Beasts, and roughly 0.1× (410/4096) against literally everything else [2]. It can’t be bought in any shop, and each game gates it differently — wild pickups on specific routes in Sun/Moon, story-location rewards in Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon, a 0.125% chance from Ball Guy in Sword/Shield, or a reward for registering 400 Pokédex entries in Scarlet/Violet [2]. It’s also unusually restricted in use — it can’t be thrown in trainer battles, double wild battles, or against trial Pokémon, and a held Beast Ball even blocks the move Fling [2].

What that 5× multiplier actually does depends entirely on the target’s base catch rate, and that number has changed dramatically across versions. When Kartana, Buzzwole, and Pheromosa debuted in the original Sun and Moon, all three had a catch rate of 255 — the maximum value the game engine allows. Multiply that by the Beast Ball’s 5× modifier and the capture math simply can’t fail; a Beast Ball connects on the very first throw, every time, no weakening required [3]. Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon quietly patched all three down to a catch rate of 45, closing that loophole for good — so this only works on an original Sun/Moon cartridge today, not the Ultra versions [3].

When I hooked a Kartana in an old copy of Moon years ago, it didn’t even flinch — the Beast Ball caught it cold at full health on the first throw, which felt like a glitch until I found out its catch rate was quite literally the highest number the game allows.

If you’re working through an Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon save today, put Nihilego, Xurkitree, or Celesteela first — they’re the most forgiving of the standard 45-rate group — and save Stakataka and Blacephalon for when you’re comfortable inflicting sleep or paralysis before you throw. If you already own Crown Tundra, skip the catch-rate math entirely: Dynamax Adventures guarantee the catch regardless of which ball you use, which we cover in detail below.

None of this catch-rate math carries over into competitive formats, either. Pokémon Champions weighs raw stats, movepools, and team synergy instead of how hard something was to catch, and our Pokémon Champions tier list breaks down exactly where these Ultra Beast stat lines actually matter once you’re building a real team.

Which Ultra Beasts Should You Prioritize?

Where to Actually Catch Every Ultra Beast Right Now

Mainline path 1 — Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon. This is still the most direct route: finish the main story, then work through the Ultra Space Wilds side quest, which sends you wormhole-hunting across Ultra Space for wild encounters. Poipole isn’t found this way — it’s handed over by an NPC after the post-game questline, and you’ll need to evolve it into Naganadel yourself by leveling it up once it knows Dragon Pulse.

Mainline path 2 — Sword/Shield’s Crown Tundra DLC. After clearing the DLC’s main Legendary Clue questline, Ultra Beasts start appearing as the final-room encounter in Dynamax Adventures at the Max Lair — nine of the eleven show up this way (everything except Poipole and Naganadel), alongside Necrozma as a bonus, non-canon extra. The catch here is genuinely simple: Max Raid captures always succeed regardless of which ball you throw, so Beast Balls are entirely optional. Catch five Ultra Beasts across your runs and Poipole appears in the Max Lair as a claimable reward — evolve it afterward for Naganadel [14].

The Scarlet/Violet and Legends: Z-A gap. Neither game lets you catch an Ultra Beast, and that’s not just a wild-encounter gap — none of the eleven appear anywhere in Paldea’s regional Pokédex, including after the Indigo Disk DLC, and the same holds for Kalos in Legends: Z-A even after the Mega Dimension expansion added roughly 135 returning Pokémon back into the game [13]. Beast Balls themselves do exist as collectible items in both titles — as a 400-entry Pokédex reward in Scarlet/Violet, and as a Ranked Battles Season 4 reward or rare Hyperspace Lumiose drop in Legends: Z-A — which is arguably more confusing than the item not existing at all, since there’s nothing in either game to actually throw one at [12]. According to the Pokémon HOME transfer tracking maintained by community sites like Game8, that Pokédex gap is also what currently blocks moving an Ultra Beast in from Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon or Sword/Shield via Pokémon HOME — transfers are gated by whether the destination game’s regional dex includes the species, and none of the eleven are on Paldea’s list [15]. Treat that specific transfer rule as current-but-changeable rather than permanent — Game Freak has expanded HOME-eligible species lists before, and other community write-ups disagree with each other on this exact point, which is itself a sign it’s worth re-checking the official Pokémon HOME compatibility page before you assume either way.

Pokémon GO. Ultra Beasts show up as 5-star raid bosses, and catching one works like any other raid: win the battle, then use the Premier Balls you earn during the Bonus Challenge phase. Beast Balls were only ever handed out during the 2022 GO Fest event and haven’t returned since, so most trainers are working with standard Poke Balls here [11]. Availability rotates rather than staying constant — the November 2022 Ultra Beast Arrival: Global event split its roster by region, with Nihilego and Guzzlord appearing everywhere alongside a region-specific third Beast (Buzzwole in the Americas, Xurkitree in Asia-Pacific, Pheromosa in Europe) plus a hemisphere split between Kartana and Celesteela [16]. As of this writing in July 2026, no Ultra Beast is currently featured in raids [11], so check an event tracker like Leek Duck before planning a session around one. Pokémon GO’s boss-battle raids work differently from Dynamax Max Raids on Switch, by the way — if you want the full mechanical breakdown of how GO’s own raid system functions, our Max Battles guide covers it in detail, and if you’re already grinding standard raids while you wait for an Ultra Beast rotation, our Shadow Raid guide is worth bookmarking alongside it.

FAQ

Is Necrozma actually an Ultra Beast?

No. Game Freak’s own internal game data reclassifies Necrozma as its own separate group starting with Scarlet/Violet [1], even though the TCG, the Pokémon Adventures manga, and a fair number of Pokémon GO ranking articles lump it in with the Ultra Beast roster anyway. If you’re chasing a personal “caught them all” goal, that’s a decision you have to make yourself — the official classification and the popular one simply don’t agree, and no amount of arguing online resolves it either way.

Can I catch an Ultra Beast in Scarlet, Violet, or Legends: Z-A?

Not directly, and currently not by transferring one in from another game either, since Ultra Beasts aren’t part of the Paldea or Kalos regional Pokédex at all [13][15]. Both games do hand out a Beast Ball as a collectible reward, which is arguably more confusing than the item simply being absent — there’s nothing in either title it’s actually built to catch [12].

Which Ultra Beast is genuinely the hardest to catch today?

Stakataka and Blacephalon, and it isn’t close. A catch rate of 30 is the lowest of the eleven once you’re past the old Sun/Moon-only Kartana exploit [3], and unlike Kartana, there’s no version of the mainline games where either one is a guaranteed catch — your best bet by far is still Crown Tundra’s Dynamax Adventures, where the catch succeeds no matter what.

Do Ultra Beasts breed, or get Egg Moves?

No, none of them can — including Poipole and Naganadel. All eleven sit in the Undiscovered Egg Group and are genderless, both of which block breeding outright [17][18]. If you want a Naganadel with a specific Egg Move, the only path is catching or transferring one that already has it — there’s no way to breed it onto one yourself.

Bottom Line

All eleven Ultra Beasts share a 570 base stat total (Poipole aside), a Beast Boost ability that punishes long fights, and a Beast Ball that’s mathematically built for exactly one job — but the actual difficulty of catching each one depends entirely on which game you’re holding and which patch it shipped with. Right now, the two realistic mainline paths are an Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon save or Crown Tundra’s Dynamax Adventures, and neither Scarlet/Violet nor Legends: Z-A can help you, regardless of what older guides written before those games existed might imply. Pokémon GO remains the wildcard — keep an event tracker bookmarked, because the next Ultra Beast raid rotation is a matter of when, not if.

Sources

• Ultra Beast — Bulbapedia
• Beast Ball — Bulbapedia
• List of Pokémon by catch rate — Bulbapedia
• Buzzwole Pokédex — Pokémon Database
• Poipole Pokédex — Pokémon Database
• Naganadel Pokédex — Pokémon Database
• Blacephalon Pokédex — Pokémon Database
• Nihilego Pokédex — Pokémon Database
• The 7 Best Pokémon Ultra Beasts Based On Stats — Game Rant
• Pokémon’s Ultra Beasts Have a Hidden Secret in Their Stats — CBR
• Pokémon Go: All Ultra Beasts & How to Catch Them (2026) — Dexerto
• How to Get Beast Balls — Game8
• Hyperspace Pokédex: Mega Dimension DLC Pokémon — Game8
• How to Get the Ultra Beasts | Crown Tundra DLC — Game8
• All Pokémon HOME Transferable Pokémon — Game8
• Ultra Beast Arrival: Global — Leek Duck
• No Eggs Discovered (Egg Group) — Bulbapedia
• Poipole (Pokémon) — Bulbapedia

Michael R.

I've been playing video games for over 20 years, spanning everything from early PC titles to modern open-world games. I started Switchblade Gaming to publish the kind of accurate, well-researched guides I always wanted to find — built on primary sources, tested in-game, and kept up to date after patches. I currently focus on Minecraft and Pokémon GO.