Scan an Area

1 What Scan an Area does

Scan an Area sends scanners to one spot right now instead of waiting for the regular sweep. Every point is scanned at the same time, so a zone about 2.5 km across comes back in 3 to 4 seconds, and every Pokémon it finds has IV, CP, level and moves.

It works anywhere the map goes, including towns we don't cover yet. It doesn't use tokens and has no monthly limit.

2 Who can use it

Scan an Area is part of Premium. Free and Basic don't include it. After you upgrade, the map picks up your plan on its own within about two minutes; reload the map page and the button appears.

See Premium on the pricing page

3 Where the button is

Open the map at map.pogoalerts.net. Scan an Area sits in the column of round buttons, the same column as the ☰ menu. Its icon is a circle of scattered dots.

On a phone

The round buttons run down the edge of the screen. Scan an Area is one of them, not hidden inside the ☰ menu. Tap it once.

On a computer

Hover over the round buttons until the tooltip reads Scan an Area, then click it.

4 Scan a spot

Pan and zoom so the place you want is in the middle of the screen. The marker drops at the center of your view, not where you tap.
Tap Scan an Area. A marker appears with its settings open.
Drag the marker to fine-tune the spot. The circles redraw as you go, so what you see is exactly the ground that will be scanned.
Set Size, Range, Radius and Spacing as shown in the next section.
Tap Scan Here.

While the scan marker is up, the other map buttons are greyed out. That's expected. Tap Cancel in the marker's popup to back out.

5 Settings that cover every meter

The game reports Pokémon about 70 m from a scan point. These settings place the points so nothing between them is missed.

Setting	Use
Size	10, the largest. 331 points, about 2.5 km across, and just as fast as size 1.
Range	Pokémon
Radius (under Advanced)	70 m
Spacing (under Advanced)	1

A higher radius or spacing spreads the points further apart than the game can see, which leaves holes the circles on the map hide. A lower radius finds nothing extra.

Avoid Range: Gym. It spaces the points about 1.3 km apart, but a scan only sees Pokémon within about 70 m of each point, so it misses almost every spawn. If a big scan found almost nothing, check this first.

To cover a whole town, place several size-10 scans side by side.

6 What happens next

You'll see “Scan demand confirmed” and the marker disappears. The scan is already done by then. The map refreshes about every 20 seconds, so give it a moment before scanning again; panning the map slightly refreshes it sooner.

Anything a scan finds appears on the map for everyone. Pokémon keep whatever time they had left, which can be a couple of minutes.

7 If a scan finds nothing

Check the Pokémon layer is switched on in the ☰ menu. If the map shows no Pokémon anywhere, the layer is off, not the scan.
Wait 20 seconds for the map to refresh.
Loosen your IV or level filter. A scan that found forty ordinary Pokémon shows nothing if you only display hundos.
Check Range is on Pokémon, not Gym.
A quiet street at a quiet hour can hold only a handful of Pokémon. A busy town center that returns nothing points to your filters.

If you see an Error message after pressing Scan Here, the request didn't reach the scanners. Tell us in #support on Discord.

8 What it doesn't do

It finds Pokémon only. PokéStops, gyms, raids, quests and invasions come from the regular scanning of an area we cover.
It's a one-off look at one place. To keep an area scanning all the time, put tokens on it or request coverage.
A Pokémon it finds can reach your DM alerts, but only if it matches your filters and sits inside an area you picked on the DM Alerts site.