Gauntlet vs Hobby Life
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Gauntlet
This app helps Magic: The Gathering players track game lives, build and customize decks, and record game history. It offers detailed stats for players and decks, supports multiple players, and includes a powerful hand simulator.
- Life tracking for up to 6 players
- Deck building and importing
- Game history and stats
- Hand simulator
- Deck customization with card art
- Deck organization with folders
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Gauntlet is the most feature packed Magic: The Gathering utility app available. It’s a life tracker, deck builder and record keeper of your games. THE BEST LIFE TRACKER: • Select your deck and the decks your opponents are playing. Player tiles will be updated with the cover art of each deck. • Save the results when the game is over. Select a winner, and each player will have their career and deck stats updated immediately. • Full support for up to 6 players with custom life totals, and a turn randomizer to determine who plays first. • Other features include 21 unique tile colours, 15 unique counters, rolling D6, and a game timer. THE BEST MOBILE DECK BUILDER: • Brew on the go or import your decks from other deck building sites. • Customize your deck with art from any card in the multiverse. • Pick a format and your deck screen adapts to show things like your commander or your signature spell. • Bling out the cards in your deck with foils. • Shuffle up and draw an opening 7 with a powerful hand simulator. • Stay ahead of your competition with deck list data. View your mana curve, pip breakdown, and more. • Export your deck lists as text, or share a link to your profile on social media. • Keep your decks organized with folders, and sort them by name, games played, wins, and format. YOUR GAME HISTORY IN DETAIL: • Every game is saved making it easy to go through previous games and see who played, who won, and which decks came to battle. • Track wins and losses for each deck, and see how your career wins and losses change over time. • Follow your friends to stay up-to-date with their latest brews, deck performance, and game history.
Hobby Life
Track your miniature collecting and army building progress. Log your backlog, monitor monthly progress and spending, and predict completion times. Link painting projects to army lists and view progress with attached photos.
- Collectibles tracking
- Army building progress
- Backlog prediction
- Monthly progress monitoring
- Spending habit analysis
- Painting project linking
- Photo gallery
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Hobby Life allows you to track your miniature collecting and army building progress and even predict when you will finish preparing your army based on the current backlog. Start by building your collection and wishlist, then view your current monthly progress and spending habit to make choices about your next hobby steps. You can even link your painting projects to army lists which automatically update when you make some progress, so you can see how close you are to finishing your lists. This app is not a comprehensive list builder but does have some tools to help you bring in your lists from list builders. You can attach photos to your projects and view them in a gallery. Try out the seasonal scoring, try to get the lowest score each season. Customisation is encouraged, the app will transform to light and dark mode based on your system settings and also provides a number of colour theme options.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Gauntlet at 4.9 against Hobby Life's 4.4. Gauntlet also leads on ratings volume (309 vs 5) and update cadence (weekly vs every 3 weeks). On price, review sentiment, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Gauntlet holds the better App Store score, 4.9 against 4.4. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Gauntlet has 309 ratings behind it against 5, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 83% of Gauntlet's written reviews are positive against 85% of Hobby Life's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Gauntlet ships an update weekly, Hobby Life every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 25, 2026 and October 24, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Gauntlet | Hobby Life |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.9 (309 ratings) — better | 4.4 (5 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 83.3% of reviews | 84.6% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 309 — better | 5 |
| Update frequency | Weekly — better | Every 3 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 16.4 | 16.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 18 MB | 10 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Scott Campbell | Neil North |
Customer experience
Gauntlet
Hobby Life
Bugs and requests
Gauntlet
Reported bugs
5 issues- Developers have seemingly given up (according to one review)
- App ruined for jailbroken phones (iOS 14 and up)
- Board scrolls every time life or counters are moved
- Does not track win-rate for the deck not shown as primary in a match
- App is very small on iPad Pro
Requested features
19 requests- Scan cars to make adding decks easier
- More precise search engine
- Faster card loading times
- Display card prices
- Scan cards in deck building
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- Add Android support
- Add tournament bracket functionality
- Deeper stat tracking
- Leave notes about each deck
- Leave notes about individual cards
- In-app purchases for donations
- Add play test cards
- Better layout for exporting decks to text
- Feature to track win/loss ratios without starting a game
- Option for locking board scrolling
- Android release (mentioned as desired)
- Manual change of player names when playing 'against yourself'
- Add friends who don’t use the app to games
- Add full deck lists
Hobby Life
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Gauntlet
No in-app purchases
Hobby Life
No in-app purchases









