Short answer: your Trainer Profile is the Pokémon GO-only screen friends see from your Friend List - avatar, buddy, team, catches, level/XP, distance walked, battles won. Your Niantic Profile is a separate, cross-game hub reachable from it, showing lifetime stats and recent achievements across every Niantic app you play (Pokémon GO, Ingress, Pikmin Bloom, and more). Only you and your Niantic friends can view it, and each game's visibility on it is controlled independently.
Trainer school
Niantic Profile vs Trainer Profile in Pokémon GO - what's the difference?
If you've tapped past a friend's Trainer Profile and landed on something that looks like a different page entirely, with stats from games you don't even play, that's not a bug - it's the Niantic Profile, and it works differently from the screen you came from.
Trainer Profile: the Pokémon GO screen
This is the profile every friend on your Friend List already sees when they tap your name. Niantic's own privacy documentation lists what it shows:
- Avatar
- Buddy Pokémon
- Team
- Number of Pokémon caught
- Most recently caught Pokémon
- Trainer level and XP
- Distance walked
- Number of battles won
Two things about it are worth knowing. First, it's visible to anyone already on your Friend List - there's no separate opt-in. Second, you can hide one specific field: which Pokémon you've most recently caught, via a toggle in Settings. The rest of the list (level, buddy, distance, battles) isn't covered by that toggle. For the full rundown of what a frozen or unchanging Trainer Profile can tell you about a friend, see our guide on spotting an inactive friend.
Friends can also pick up your rough location two other ways that have nothing to do with the profile screen itself: opening a Gift you sent, or trading with you. Neither is a profile setting - they're side effects of the gift and trade systems themselves.
Niantic Profile: the cross-game hub
Tap through from your Trainer Profile (or your own in-game menu) and you reach the Niantic Profile - a single screen that pulls information from every Niantic app tied to your account, not just Pokémon GO. According to Niantic's own help documentation, it shows:
- Recent achievements in Pokémon GO and your other Niantic apps
- Lifetime stats, including total distance walked across apps
- The date you first started playing Niantic games
This page has a narrower audience than your Trainer Profile by default: Niantic states only you and your Niantic friends can view it at all - it isn't a public page the way an Everyone-visible game can be searched by a stranger. Two privacy options sit on top of that:
- You can hide the "date you last used an app" and hide your username for individual games.
- Each game you play gets its own Everyone / Friends / Only Me visibility dropdown, which decides whether that specific game shows on the profile at all and whether friends can find you in it by name search. We cover this dropdown in full in our guide on Niantic Profile visibility settings.
The two profiles side by side
| Trainer Profile | Niantic Profile | |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Pokémon GO only | Every Niantic app on your account |
| Who sees it | Anyone on your Friend List | Only you and your Niantic friends |
| What it shows | Avatar, buddy, team, catches, level/XP, distance, battles | Lifetime stats, recent achievements, start date, per-game visibility |
| How you reach it | Tap a friend's name on your Friend List | Tap through from a Trainer Profile, or your own profile menu |
| Main privacy control | Hide "most recently caught" Pokémon | Per-game Everyone/Friends/Only Me, hide last-used date |
Why this trips people up
The two screens are stacked on top of each other in the app - one leads to the other - so it's easy to assume they're the same profile with extra tabs. They're not: a friend who only ever opens your Trainer Profile from the Friend List never sees your Niantic Profile data unless they tap through, and a game you've set to Only Me on your Niantic Profile can still show up normally on your ordinary Pokémon GO Trainer Profile to friends who already have you added. The settings don't share a switch.
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FAQ
Can a friend see my Niantic Profile if we're only friends in Pokémon GO, not another Niantic app? Yes - Niantic friendship is account-level, not per-game. Once you're Niantic friends (which happens automatically when you add each other in a Niantic game like Pokémon GO), they can view your Niantic Profile subject to its own per-game visibility settings.
Does hiding a game on my Niantic Profile also hide it from my Pokémon GO Trainer Profile? No. Niantic Profile visibility only controls that cross-game hub page. Your Pokémon GO Trainer Profile is shown to Friend List members through a separate system and isn't affected by the Niantic Profile dropdown.
Where do I find my own Niantic Profile? Open your Trainer Profile in Pokémon GO and tap through to it, or look for it in your account/profile menu - the exact tap path has moved around between app versions.
Does the Niantic Profile show how many Pokémon I've caught? Niantic's own documentation describes "recent achievements" and lifetime distance walked, not a dedicated catch counter - that number lives on your Pokémon GO Trainer Profile instead, unless you've hidden it.
Can a complete stranger ever see my Niantic Profile? Not by default. Niantic states only you and your Niantic friends can view it, which is stricter than the Everyone option available for individual games on the visibility dropdown covering your Trainer Profile search-ability.