Pokémon Type Matchup Calculator
Is this move super effective? Pick the attacking type and the defending type, and this Pokémon type matchup calculator reads the official type chart for you — the damage multiplier, and what it means for the battle.
The Chart, Read One Cell at a Time
Every Pokémon battle runs on an 18-by-18 table of multipliers, and this calculator is a window into it: choose the move’s type and the defender’s type, and it returns the cell — 2× for super effective, 1× neutral, 0.5× resisted, 0× immune. The default pairing is the franchise’s first lesson: Electric against Water is 2×, while Electric against Ground is a flat 0 — the immunity that has ended more Pikachu stories than any other cell. The table’s logic is mostly memorable folklore (Water douses Fire, Fire burns Grass, Grass drinks Water — the starter triangle) layered with two decades of balance patches, and its full text is maintained by the community reference, Bulbapedia’s type chart. What the calculator adds over the wall chart is speed and the dual-type rule in the note: most competitive defenders carry two types, and their true multiplier is the product of the two cells.
Dual Types: Where 4× and 0.25× Live
The product rule creates the extremes that decide matches. A defender whose types are both weak to the move takes 4× — Ice against a Dragon/Flying type (Dragonite or Salamence) is the canonical execution, and Rock against Fire/Flying (Charizard) the other classic. Both types resisting gives 0.25×, the wall’s shrug. A weakness and a resistance cancel to neutral, which is why some dual typings are defensively golden: Water/Ground is weak only to Grass (at 4×, the famous cost) because Water’s Electric weakness is erased by Ground’s immunity — immunity wins every multiplication it joins, since any product containing a zero is zero. Team building is substantially the art of arranging these products across six Pokémon so that no single attacking type posts 2× or better against the whole roster, and switch-in decisions mid-battle are the same arithmetic under time pressure — exactly the computation this page performs one cell at a time.
The Famous Immunities and Resistances
Some cells are worth memorising outright, because they gate entire strategies. Ground is immune to Electric; Flying is immune to Ground; Ghost is immune to Normal and Fighting; Normal is immune to Ghost; Dark is immune to Psychic; Steel is immune to Poison; Fairy is immune to Dragon. The seven immunities are the chart’s hard walls — a move into immunity does nothing at all, not reduced damage — and they shape competitive staples (the Electric-type’s fear of a Ground switch-in is a whole genre of prediction). At the other pole, Steel’s defensive profile (ten resistances) made it the premier defensive type for generations, and Fairy’s introduction in Generation VI was a deliberate strike at Dragon’s offensive dominance — the chart is a living balance document, which is why this calculator encodes the current (Gen VI onward) version and the article dates it: earlier generations differ in a handful of cells (Steel once resisted Ghost and Dark, among others), and retro formats use their own charts.
STAB, Abilities and the Multipliers Beyond the Chart
The chart’s number is the base of a stack, and the note names the next layer: STAB, the same-type attack bonus, multiplies by a further 1.5× when the move matches the attacker’s own type — the reason a Pokémon’s own-type moves anchor its moveset. Beyond it sit abilities that edit the chart per-Pokémon (Levitate grants a Ground immunity the typing lacks; Water Absorb converts a 2× weakness into healing; Thick Fat halves Fire and Ice against its holder), items and field effects (a Charti Berry halves one super-effective Rock hit; terrains and weather bend specific types), and the Terastal and Dynamax mechanics of recent generations that rewrite a Pokémon’s type mid-match. None of that invalidates the base cell — every one of those effects multiplies against it — so the calculator’s figure is the correct first number of every damage estimate, and the honest boundary of a chart tool: it reads the table perfectly, and the battle’s other modifiers are layered on by the player who knows they exist.
Coverage: The Offensive Reading of the Same Chart
Everything said defensively reads backwards into offence, and competitive players run the chart in this direction most: a moveset’s coverage is the set of defending types its moves hit at 2× or better, and the four moves lots are chosen to maximise the union. The classic pairings exist because their charts interlock — Ice and Ground together threaten nearly everything (the BoltBeam tradition of Electric plus Ice is the other elder) — while a moveset of one type, however strong, leaves its user walled by that type’s resistances. The calculator audits coverage one pairing at a time: run your move’s type against the types you fear, and the cells that come back 0.5× or 0 are the holes a coverage move must fill. Team preview at a match’s start is this computation done at speed across six opposing typings — which is why the chart rewards memorisation, and why a tool that reads it exactly, at leisure, is how the memorisation gets built.
Reading a Type’s Whole Row: Identity in Eighteen Cells
Each attacking type also has a personality the chart assigns it, worth reading once in full. Electric is the precision instrument: one immunity to fear (Ground), few resistances, prized targets (Water, Flying) everywhere. Ground is the wrecking ball with a famous blind spot — it cannot touch Flying or Levitate at all, and in exchange it threatens five types including the mighty Steel. Fire is the balanced blade, strong into the defensive grasses and steels, blunted by the waters and its own kind. Psychic, once the Generation I tyrant, now reads as a cautionary tale about balance patches: two immunities against it (Dark nullifies it entirely) and a chart crowded with the types added partly to humble it. Reading rows this way turns the table from a lookup into a cast of characters, each with habits a player can exploit, a reputation a metagame can price, and a generation of young players who learned it by heart the way earlier ones learned multiplication tables — and a player who knows the cast stops needing the lookup at the moments the game is fastest, which was the point of building the calculator in the first place: a reference fast enough to teach, until the chart lives in the player’s head rent-free.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is super effective against Water?
Electric and Grass both hit Water for 2× — read straight off the chart’s Water column, and the reason Water’s many resistances still leave it two famous holes. Water itself resists Fire, Water, Ice and Steel (0.5×), and its own attacks are super effective against Fire, Ground and Rock. Run any pairing through the calculator to see the cell with its label; the article’s dual-type rule then extends the answer to the Water/Ground and Water/Flying defenders you will actually meet.
Why does Electric do nothing against Ground?
Because the chart says 0× — an immunity, not a resistance: Ground-types are grounded, in the fiction’s cheerful physics, and the move fails entirely. It is the most strategically loaded zero in the game, since Electric is otherwise a superb offensive type (super effective against the common Water and Flying types, resisted by few). The calculator distinguishes immunity (0×) from resistance (0.5×) in its label, because the tactical difference is total: a resisted move still chips; an immune move is a wasted turn.
How do I calculate damage against a dual-type Pokémon?
Multiply the two single-type multipliers, as the note describes: look up the move against each of the defender’s types and multiply the results. Electric against a Water/Flying defender (Gyarados) is 2 × 2 = 4× — the most famous execution in the franchise. Electric against Water/Ground is 2 × 0 = 0. Any tool quoting a single figure for a dual-type defender without this product is guessing; this calculator gives you both factors honestly, one lookup each.
What type has the fewest weaknesses?
Among single types, Electric carries just one weakness (Ground) — a leanness that is exactly why Electric-types anchor defensive cores. Among dual typings, Water/Ground and the famous case of Spiritomb’s old typing (Ghost/Dark, which before Fairy’s arrival had no weaknesses at all) lead the historical table; the current chart leaves every typing with at least one hole, Fairy having closed the last perfect defence in Generation VI. The calculator’s cells let you audit any candidate typing weakness by weakness.
Does this chart apply to Pokémon GO?
Mostly, with gentler numbers: GO uses the same super-effective/resisted structure but compresses the multipliers (super effective is 1.6× rather than 2×, resistances 0.625×, and immunities become deep resistances rather than zeros, stacking to the same product logic). The main-series chart encoded here is the console games’ standard. The pairings’ directions — which types beat which — agree between the two systems, so the calculator’s strategic answers transfer even where its exact multipliers are the main-series ones.