Planet Zoo 2 Accreditation Tiers and Animal Unlocks

What each accreditation tier needs

A tier unlocks when you meet all of its requirements. Frontier's player guide says higher tiers give you new species in Trading, better marketing, new Research Network types and more room to store animals. The marketing column below is the number of extra campaign slots each tier adds.

Every save starts at tier 1 with 1 Bronze marketing slot. Over all five tiers the marketing slots add up to 9, and Silver and Gold campaigns open at tiers 3 and 5. Reaching tier 5 earns the achievement Credit Where It's Due.

How to raise your accreditation tier

In Career

Career accreditation rises with the medals you win from scenario zoos and Wildlife Reserves. Bronze medals do most of the work: tier 5 needs 18 Bronze and 2 Silver medals. Each of tiers 2 to 4 also opens a new Career location. Career tier 5 adds no animals; by tier 4 every animal can be bought.

In Franchise

Franchise accreditation counts your zoos' Reputation stars and your Wildlife Reserves' Biodiversity Rating stars. Tier 2 needs only a zoo with 3 Reputation stars. From tier 3 on you also need reserves, and tier 5 asks for 2 zoos with 5 Reputation stars, and 3 Wildlife Reserves with 5 Biodiversity Rating stars. Releasing animals into reserves is how you raise Biodiversity; the Planet Zoo 2 Wildlife Reserves guide explains the steps, and the release groups finder shows which reserve each animal can go to. Our Planet Zoo 2 Franchise mode guide has tips for the first tiers.

The two modes never share progress. Frontier says playing Career does not move your Franchise tier, and you do not need Career to climb in Franchise.

Tier 1 animals: what you can buy from the start

Franchise (32): the Aardvark, Amazonian Giant Centipede, Bactrian Camel, Black Wildebeest, Blue Wildebeest, Bluespine Unicornfish, Blunthead Cichlid, Cape Buffalo, Cloudless Sulphur, Clown Anemonefish, Clown Loach, Common Bluetongue, Common Ostrich, Common Rudd, Common Warthog, Galápagos Giant Tortoise, Giant Forest Scorpion, Giant Malaysian Leaf Insect, Giant Tiger Land Snail, Koi, Meerkat, Nyala, Plains Zebra, Red Deer, Sacred Scarab Beetle, Schooling Bannerfish, Springbok, Thomson's Gazelle, Toco Toucan, Wild Boar, Yellow Anaconda and Yellow Tang.

Career (33): the Aardvark, African Tigerfish, Amazonian Giant Centipede, Bluespine Unicornfish, Blunthead Cichlid, Cape Buffalo, Cloudless Sulphur, Clown Anemonefish, Clown Loach, Common Bluetongue, Common Ostrich, Common Rudd, Common Warthog, Galápagos Giant Tortoise, Giant Forest Scorpion, Giant Malaysian Leaf Insect, Giant Tiger Land Snail, Koi, Lion, Masai Giraffe, Meerkat, Nyala, Plains Zebra, Ring-Tailed Lemur, Sable Antelope, Sacred Scarab Beetle, Schooling Bannerfish, Shoebill, Thomson's Gazelle, Toco Toucan, Wild Boar, Yellow Anaconda and Yellow Tang.

A new Franchise has plenty of grassland grazers and small exhibit animals, but no big cat: the Lion is a tier 1 animal in Career and a tier 5 animal in Franchise.

Unlocking an animal only puts it in Trading: you still pay for it, and many animals are priced in Conservation Credits rather than cash. Our Planet Zoo 2 Conservation Credits guide lists every way to earn them.

Animals that unlock at a different tier in Franchise

83 animals unlock at the same tier in both modes. The other 53 do not: 32 come later in Franchise and 21 come earlier. The biggest moves, three tiers or more:

• Lion: tier 5 in Franchise and tier 1 in Career
• Masai Giraffe: tier 4 in Franchise and tier 1 in Career
• Shoebill: tier 4 in Franchise and tier 1 in Career
• Western Chimpanzee: tier 5 in Franchise and tier 2 in Career

The ten Franchise tier 5 animals are the African Savannah Elephant, Asian Elephant, Giant Panda, Great Hammerhead, Lion, Ocean Sunfish, Sumatran Orangutan, Western Chimpanzee, Western Lowland Gorilla and White-Backed Vulture. The Giant Panda is tier 5 in Franchise and tier 3 in Career.

Every animal's accreditation tier

All 136 animals in the official Zoopedia, A to Z. Plan a habitat for any of them in the Planet Zoo 2 habitat planner, or read what each entry lists in the Planet Zoo 2 Zoopedia guide.

The official online Zoopedia does not show unlock tiers. These tiers were checked on October 21, 2026 against the in-game Zoopedia in released-game footage, where each locked animal shows the tier it needs. Two elephants, the Lion and the Giant Panda were among the animals checked.