Comparison

Gauntlet vs Cauldron

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

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.

Highlights
  • 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
Features
Read full description

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.

About

Cauldron

This app acts as a life counter for card games, allowing users to print tokens, dice, and cards directly from their device. It offers various game modes and a comprehensive index of cards and tokens for quick access and printing.

Highlights
  • Voice-activated card and token printing
  • Life counter with player damage tracking
  • Supports multiple game modes
  • Dice rolling and coin flipping
  • Card and token index with search
  • Customizable token creation
Features
Read full description

Say the name of a card. It comes out of your printer. Cauldron is the life counter that prints tokens. Hold the microphone, say "goblin" or "4/4 angel with flying" or "treasure," and the card is found, dithered and printed on receipt paper in about a second. LIFE COUNTER • Drag from one seat to another to deal commander damage. Partner commanders are counted apart. • Draw a glyph on a seat to give it the monarch, poison, energy, experience, rads or the city's blessing. • Three fingers across the board starts a new game. Two fingers opens the settings. • Circle the dial to undo and redo. • Supports up to 8 players in a pod (7+ on iPad / tablet only) • Say "2/4/6/8 players" to change the game size. • Archenemy and Treachery, dealt and printed by the app. • This is a full-fledged life counter, without menus. THE PRINTER • Cauldron drives 7 different printers over Bluetooth, and two others over Wi-Fi. • The printers use no ink - merely fast heat transfer to receipt paper, they will not smear. • A print queue lines up as many cards as you like, shows what is left, and can be stopped and carried on. E-INK • Cauldron supports 5 variety of thin, cheap e-ink displays for token print targets, written to over NFC DICE AND COINS AND MORE • Say "roll a d20" or "flip a coin." • Four, six, eight, ten, twelve, twenty and a hundred sides... • all announced out loud by a voice synthesizer that sounds like it was built in 1982. • "Momir {number}" to get a random creature. Say "Calling Mr. Vig" for a standalone Momir Vig faux-payphone interface. • Say "copy camera" to photograph a card and print it as a copy. THE TOKEN INDEX Say "token index" or hold four fingers on the board to open it. • Browse and search every printable token, by name or by artist, with filters for each kind of token. • Swipe through each token's artwork and print the one you like. • Tap an artwork to keep it out of random picks, or long-press to always print that one. • SHUFFLE, RANDOM and SEQUENTIAL control how artwork is dealt when you ask by voice. • A UB switch keeps Universes Beyond artwork out of random picks. • Create your own tokens, and add your own artwork to or photo library. • Favorites: drag the heart onto artwork you love, then print one, print them all, or share them as an Instagram story. • See any card full screen, with the artist credited u • Tap (i) for a guide to everything. THE CARD INDEX Say "card index" to open it. • Every real Magic card, held on your phone, to search, sort and print. • Browse by set, and print a booster pack. • Print a whole card, or just its art or its words. GAME MODES • Archenemy, Treachery, Planechase and Horde • Chaos draft Every token is indexed on your phone, so lookup is quick. Speech is recognised on the device. Nothing about your game is uploaded anywhere. No Accounts. No Signups. WHAT YOU NEED A supported thermal printer and a roll of paper. Cauldron will show you which paper and printer to purchase. Card data and images from Scryfall. Cauldron is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of Apple's Standard Terms of Use apply: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

Screenshots

Gauntlet4 screens
Cauldron4 screens

Verdict

The call

Gauntlet and Cauldron both sit at 4.9 stars, but that hides the real split: 100% of Cauldron's written reviews are positive against 83% of Gauntlet's. Cauldron also leads on update cadence (every 3 days vs weekly). Gauntlet's advantage is ratings volume (309 vs 53). On price, rating, 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.9 for Gauntlet against 5.0 for Cauldron. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Gauntlet has 309 ratings behind it against 53, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 83% of Gauntlet's written reviews are positive against 100% of Cauldron's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Gauntlet ships an update weekly, Cauldron every 3 days. The most recent releases landed on November 3, 2026 and November 1, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
Gauntlet versus Cauldron: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterGauntletCauldron
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.9 (309 ratings)5.0 (53 ratings) — better
Positive reviews83.3% of reviews100.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings309 — better53
Update frequencyWeeklyEvery 3 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFreeFree
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS16.416.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size18 MB93 MB
Age rating4+12+
DeveloperScott CampbellJoseph Liechty

Customer experience

Gauntlet

All ratings299 ratings
Positive97.7%
Neutral1.0%
Negative1.3%
Written reviews30 reviews
Positive83.3%
Neutral6.7%
Negative10.0%

Cauldron

All ratings53 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews23 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

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
Show 14 more
  • 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

Cauldron

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

None

Gauntlet

No in-app purchases

None

Cauldron

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Gauntlet free?
Gauntlet is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Cauldron free?
Cauldron is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Gauntlet or Cauldron?
Cauldron is rated higher. Gauntlet averages 4.9 out of 5 from 309 ratings, while Cauldron averages 5.0 from 53 ratings.
Do Gauntlet or Cauldron have ads?
Neither Gauntlet nor Cauldron shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Gauntlet or Cauldron?
Gauntlet ships an update weekly, and Cauldron every 3 days. Most recently, Gauntlet was updated on November 3, 2026 and Cauldron on November 1, 2026.

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