Pokémon Bank on 3DS will be free when eShop purchases end

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Pokemon Home How To Transfer From Pokemon Bank Hero
Pokemon Home How To Transfer From Pokemon Bank Hero (Image credit: Rebecca Spear / iMore)

What you need to know

  • Pokémon Bank will be free on Nintendo 3DS when eShop purchases end in March 2023.
  • Pokémon Bank is an annual service that allows players to store up to 3000 Pokémon across past games.
  • Right now, Pokémon Bank costs $5 per year.

Pokémon Bank on Nintendo 3DS will be free once eShop purchases for the platform end, The Pokémon Company has confirmed. This means players can continue to store and transfer up to 3000 Pokémon from across past games without having to pay the $5 annual fee.

Nintendo announced on Tuesday that Wii U and Nintendo 3DS eShop purchases are ending in March 2023, with the ability to add money to your account closing before that in May 2022.

Pokémon Bank is an older system used for the Nintendo 3DS, and has been replaced by Pokémon HOME on the Nintendo Switch. Pokémon HOME is being used moving forward, allowing players to swap out Pokémon across Nintendo Switch Pokémon games and store any Pokémon they want to keep. Pokémon Bank is also compatible with Pokémon HOME, so you can link both with your Nintendo account and carry all those Pokémon forward.

It is however worth noting that the free plan for Pokémon HOME only allows you to deposit up to 30 Pokémon, while anyone who upgrades to the paid premium plan can store up to 6000 Pokémon. That's 200 times the amount of Pokémon in the paid tier as the free tier

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Samuel Tolbert
Samuel Tolbert
Contributor

Samuel Tolbert is a freelance gaming writer who started working for iMore and its sister sites Windows Central and Android Central in July 2019. He handles news, previews, reviews, and exclusive original reporting, and has also been featured on TechRadar. With a background studying engineering before he shifted his focus to gaming journalism, he's skilled at identifying technical advantages and disadvantages provided by different hardware. If he’s not writing something, he’s off playing video games, spending time with his pets, exercising, or reading. He's also fond of trying to draw things with his iPad.