How to cancel your Pokémon Home subscription, and why you should do it now

As a service, Pokémon Home is essential for any longtime fan to assemble all of their monsters in one place. You can move all your old, favorite Pokémon from the GBA-era to a new home, eliminate Dexit a smidge, and even make use of the seemingly countless "wasted hours" spent playing Pokémon GO! If you’re a diligent trainer, all that can be achieved in the first hour of fiddling with Pokémon Home, nixing any reason for sustaining your subscription beyond the first month.

Who needs another monthly fee or an annual fee to worry about? Not you! (Maybe.) So how do you cancel the service, and what happens when you do?

What happens when I cancel my Pokémon Home subscription?

Fret not. If your home subscription lapses, your Pokémon will remain unharmed. You’ll just lose custody of a number of them.

Non-premium Pokémon Home subscribers are only allowed to access a single box of 30 Pokémon. According to the dedicated support page, this means if your subscription lapses, you’ll only be able to access the 30 most recently deposited Pokémon. The others will be hidden from your sight as if they never existed. They’ll re-appear once you re-subscribe.

Non-premium users also lose a host of other benefits, as detailed on this handy chart:

If you haven’t subscribed yet, the best idea might be to wait for the DLC to release, subscribe, do your various transfers, send everything to Sword and Shield, then unsubscribe.

An even better option, however, is to take advantage of the current free month for Pokémon Bank that lasts until March 12, 2020. With a Premium Home subscription, Pokémon can be transferred from most previous Pokémon games into Pokémon Bank and then into Home. After March 12, Bank will cost $4.99 per year.

In other words, players can pay $2.99 for one month of Premium Home, transfer all of their Pokémon from past generations into Home for safekeeping, transfer every monster they can into Sword and Shield based on the new extended Pokédex, then cancel their Pokémon Home subscription. Once all of that is complete, you shouldn't ever need Pokémon Bank ever again. And if your Home account goes dormant with Pokémon inside, they'll be fine. You just have to wait an untold period of time before the Sword and Shield Pokédex expands further.

How do you cancel your Pokémon Home subscription?

Pokémon Home is available on Switch, Android, and iPhone. Once subscribed, it can be accessed from any of those three platforms, but canceling is a different matter entirely.

You need to cancel from whichever platform you first subscribed to the service. If you subscribed via a mobile device, unsubscribe through that same device’s digital store. If you joined the service through your Switch, unsubscribe using the Nintendo eShop.

How do you cancel Pokémon Home on iPhone and Android?

1. On the App’s main menu, select the little menu hamburger icon on the bottom.
2. You’ll see an array of choices. Tap the “Options” cog.
3. Now, on the tab labeled as “account,” you’ll see something that reads “Current Plan.” Under it, there should be something that says “Premium Plan” and a button that reads as “Check Plan.” If the “Check Plan” option is absent, then you likely subscribed on Switch and should skip to the next section.
4. On the next page, click “Manage plan renewal.” You’ll be redirected to your system’s app store to decide the fate of your subscription! Select “Cancel subscription” and you’re free!

How to cancel Pokémon Home on Nintendo Switch

1. Head to the Nintendo eShop from your console’s main menu. It’ll have a little handbag icon. Make sure this is also being done from the user that was used to purchase the subscription.
2. Go to your account page, denoted by the avatar found on the upper right portion of the eShop.
3. Scroll down to the “Your subscriptions” button, it’ll be the very last menu option on the left. On your right, choose Pokémon Home and click “ Turn Off Automatic Renewal.” If the subscription isn’t there, it’s possible you subscribed through your phone. If so, you need to unsubscribe through your phone. Head to the previous section.
4. They’ll give you one more warning, informing you of the time left with the service. Double down on this and choose “Turn off.”
5. Now you’re free!

What will you do with the $2.99 you'll save every month using this strategy? Probably save up for the Pokémon Sword and Shield DLC due out later this year.