Genshin Impact: what a featured 5★ really costs
90.7 wishes on average, about half the 180-wish worst case. Why the 50/50 is really 55%, and what the weapon banner's 67.6 does and does not buy.
A featured 5★ character on Genshin Impact's Character Event Wish costs 90.7 wishes on average. That is about half of the 180 wishes that people usually plan around. 180 is the worst case: you reach hard pity at 90, lose the 50/50, then reach hard pity again. It is a ceiling, not a typical cost.
The rates, wish by wish
Two columns matter most. The base rate is the chance of a 5★ on any single wish before pity. The rate including pity is the long-run average once pity is counted. The gap between them is the main reason the average cost is lower than people expect.
Pity does most of the work
At the 0.6% base rate alone, a 5★ would take 167 wishes on average. Pity brings the rate up to 1.6%, which is one 5★ every 62.5 wishes. Most of that drop comes from hard pity itself: capping every run at 90 wishes would bring the average down to 69.7 on its own. The rest comes from soft pity, the rising odds in the last stretch before the cap. Soft pity explained covers how that works.
A 5★ averages 62.5 wishes. A featured 5★ averages 90.7, because you pull about 1.45 five-stars for each featured one.
The 50/50 is really 55%
When you pull a 5★ without a guarantee, the base chance that it is the featured character is 50%. If you lose, the next 5★ is guaranteed to be featured. On top of that, a mechanic called Capturing Radiance can turn a loss into a win. With it included, the chance of winning is 55%, not an even split. The effect is small but real: the featured character's combined rate becomes 1.103% per wish, which is where the 90.7 average comes from.
That average hides a lot of variation. Some players get the character in their first few wishes and others need all 180. If a character has to arrive during one banner, save for the worst case. Use the average only for planning across several banners, where good and bad luck even out.
The weapon banner: 67.6 for either weapon
The Weapon Event Wish has a lower hard pity of 80 and a better split of 75%. That gives a featured-weapon rate of 1.48% and an average of 67.6 wishes, with a worst case of 160.
Those numbers are for getting either of the 2 featured weapons, not one weapon in particular. If you want a specific weapon, it costs more, because a featured pull can still give you the other one. Epitomized Path addresses this: you choose a weapon, and each 5★ that is not your choice adds a Fate Point toward a guarantee. Always set it before your first wish on the banner. Fate Points reset when the banner ends, and changing your choice also resets them.
A specific featured 4★
The same logic applies one tier down. 4★s come at 13% including the 4★ guarantee. Each 4★ has a 50% chance of being featured, with a guarantee after a loss, and the featured slot is shared between 3 characters. Together that gives one particular featured 4★ a 2.89% chance per wish. That works out to about 34.6 wishes per copy, which matters most if you are aiming for a 4★'s constellations.
Using this
The Standard Wish costs 62.5 wishes per 5★, but you have no control over which 5★ you get. For limited characters, the useful figures are 90.7 on average and 180 at most. Every wish type's full rate breakdown is on the Wish Rates page. The characters and weapons featured on each banner are on the Banners page, and past banners are in the banner history.