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. The map rechecks your plan about every two minutes, so after you upgrade, wait two minutes and reload the map. If the button still isn't there, sign out of the map and sign in again.

The Community add-on doesn't include Premium's map features, so it doesn't include Scan an Area.

Still no button after signing out of the map and back in with an active Premium plan? Report it in Discord or email [email protected]. You don't need to clear cookies or re-link Discord.

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 grayed 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

The map already starts on Range Pokémon, Radius 70 and Spacing 1, so Size is usually the only setting to change. Size goes back to 1 every time the map reloads.

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 Sizes and ranges

Each step up in Size adds a ring of scan points around the marker. At the recommended settings the points sit about 121 m apart, so this is the ground each size covers:

Size	Scan points	Across
1	7	380 m
2	19	620 m
3	37	870 m
4	61	1.1 km
5	91	1.35 km
6	127	1.6 km
7	169	1.85 km
8	217	2.1 km
9	271	2.3 km
10	331	2.5 km

Range has two presets: Pokémon (70 m) and Gym (750 m). Under Advanced, Radius runs from 50 to 900 m and Spacing from 1 to 2. Points sit about radius × 1.73 × spacing apart.

7 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.

The popup shows Scan Requests (the points in this scan) and Current Queue. The queue is normally 0. A higher number only means a short wait, not an error.

There's no cooldown on Premium: you can scan again straight away.

8 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 the general-support channel on Discord.

9 Limits and errors

Premium has no cooldown, but one account can send at most 60 scans a minute, counted across all its devices. Go past that and the scan fails; wait a minute and it works again.
There's no area limit. You can scan anywhere the map goes, and the largest zone is size 10.
Error after Scan Here means our scanners didn't answer within 5 seconds. A size-10 scan takes 3 to 4 seconds, so a slow one can show Error even though it ran: give the map 20 seconds before you try again. If it keeps failing, tell us in the general-support channel on Discord.
No button at all means the map doesn't see Premium on the account you're signed in with. Check you're signed in with the account that pays, then see Who can use it, above.

10 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.
There's no single-point scan. Scan an Area is the only kind.
It can't scan a custom geofence from the DM Alerts site. Those only shape your alerts.