XY Pokémon-ex Pull Rate — 21.70% per pack (1 in 5)

21.70% of XY booster packs contain a Pokémon-ex card — roughly 1 in 5 packs. XY ships 6 Pokémon-ex cards in the pool, so the chance of pulling any specific Pokémon-ex is 0.0362 (≈1 in 28). These percentages come from PackRip's own rate table (the same constants the simulator runs on) — they are a model of the product, not a measurement of it. The Pokemon Company has never published pull rates.
XY Pokémon-ex pull-rate methodology
| Formula | Tier odds = 21.70% per pack; per-card odds = tier odds ÷ 6 Pokémon-ex cards = 1 in 28. |
|---|---|
| Assumptions | One independent rare-slot roll per pack; uniform selection within the tier; no pity timers, box mapping, short-print correction, or edition/condition split. |
| Data source | Set checklist and rarity labels from the bundled Pokemon TCG API catalog; tier rates from rareSlotRates(), mirrored from the live pack opener. |
| Update cadence | Regenerated by prerender whenever set metadata, catalog data, or pull-rate constants change. |
| Limitations | This is a theoretical per-pack rate. Real sealed product can show print-run variance, collation quirks, and market-specific edition differences. |
Pokémon-ex cards in XY
| # | Card | TCGplayer market | Per-card odds |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yveltal-EX #79 | $15.81 | 1 in 28 |
| 2 | Xerneas-EX #97 | $12.22 | 1 in 28 |
| 3 | Blastoise-EX #29 | $10.97 | 1 in 28 |
| 4 | Emolga-EX #46 | $7.33 | 1 in 28 |
| 5 | Venusaur-EX #1 | $6.73 | 1 in 28 |
| 6 | Skarmory-EX #80 | $4.82 | 1 in 28 |
How the 21.70% rate is computed
Every XY booster pack rolls one rare-slot card (plus uncommons, commons, and energy in fixed slots). The rare slot is itself a weighted random draw across 5 tiers — Rare, Holo Rare, Pokémon-ex, and the era's other chase rarities. The Pokémon-ex tier captures 21.70% of those rare-slot draws (= 21.70 packs out of every 100). Within the Pokémon-ex tier, all 6 cards share the slot uniformly, so per-card odds are 21.70% ÷ 6 = 0.0362 = 1 in 28.
This is the same math PackRip's live XY simulator uses to roll packs — open as many as you want for free, watch the empirical hit rate converge to the theoretical 21.70% over a large enough sample. Source code lives in src/utils/packGenerator.ts and the per-rarity drift is build-time-asserted against the published rates so the simulator and this landing page can never disagree.
Cumulative probability — how many packs to hit Pokémon-ex
Pokémon-ex pulls follow a geometric distribution with per-pack rate 0.217000. The expected number of packs until your first Pokémon-ex hit is 5; at 95% confidence you'll have one within 13 packs. Most experienced openers crack a sealed booster box (36 packs) and hit Pokémon-ex with probability 100.0% — so the average box yields just over 7.8 Pokémon-ex pulls.
Related on PackRip
- Open XY packs free — same pull rates, live RNG
- XY binder completion calculator
- XY per-pack expected value
- Top 25 most valuable XY cards
- Every Pokémon-ex card across all 140 booster sets