Card Binder vs Decksmith
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Card Binder
Manage your Magic The Gathering card collection by scanning and saving cards. View detailed card information, build and validate decks, and track card prices in real-time. Your collection syncs across devices and can be exported.
- Scan and save cards to collection
- Real-time card price checking
- Detailed card information (legality, editions)
- Build and validate decks
- Commander deck support
- Cross-device collection syncing
- Export collection to CSV
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The ultimate Magic The Gathering app. Quickly scan and save all your cards into your Binder collection, check each card price in real-time. You will be able to see a lot of details for each card: legality, all the card editions, first appearance date, and more! Features: - Build your collection quickly scanning all your cards. - Explore card details including the legality, price, editions, and much more. - Build amazing decks with support for sideboard and maybeboard. - Support for commander decks. - Validate your deck and ensure it is legal for any format. - All content is live and automatically updated. - Collection stored and shared between all your IOS devices. - Search for any card, even if it is not in your collection. - Get to know more cards using the explore tab. It will show random cards to you. - No adds, forever. - Dark mode support. - Export and share your collection using .csv files. If you have any question or feedback we'd love to hear from you at support@cardbinderapp.com
Decksmith
Effortlessly manage your Magic: The Gathering collection with real-time card scanning and price tracking. Build and validate decks for various formats, analyze their composition, and connect with a community of players. Enjoy offline access and robust privacy controls.
- Real-time card scanning
- Automatic price tracking
- Format-aware deck building
- Collection inventory management
- Offline access
- Community features
- Privacy controls
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Your entire Magic collection, in your pocket. Decksmith turns your iPhone into a card scanner, a price tracker, a format-aware deck builder and a social hub for players — wrapped in a fast, beautiful, native interface. Point your camera at a card and it is recognised in real time. Name, set, rarity, artwork and current market price are filled in automatically. No typing. No spreadsheets. — SCAN. TAP. COLLECTED. — • Real-time card recognition straight from the camera — no manual entry • One-tap confirm adds the card, its artwork and its full data to your collection • Pick the exact printing you own, set foil or non-foil, and track multiple copies • Every card image is stored on device, so your collection stays gorgeous offline — KNOW WHAT IT'S WORTH — Live market prices in USD or EUR. Decksmith keeps the price you paid alongside today's value, for every single card, so you can see at a glance what your collection has done — card by card and as a whole. Refresh whenever you want an update. — A DECK BUILDER THAT KNOWS THE RULES — Build for Standard, Modern, Pioneer, Legacy, Vintage, Commander, Pauper or Casual. Decksmith enforces deck size and copy limits for the format you chose, gives Commander its own dedicated slot, and tells you the moment a deck is legal. — SEE THE SHAPE OF YOUR DECK — An automatic mana curve, card-type distribution and average mana value for every deck you build. Spot the missing two-drop before your opponent does. — FIND ANY CARD, INSTANTLY — Search the full Magic card database or your own collection. Filter by colour, rarity, card type, set, mana cost, foil finish and double-faced cards. Sort by name, price or date added. Switch between grid and list whenever it suits you. — SMART LISTS — Build lists that fill themselves. Save any combination of filters as a smart list — trade binder, EDH staples, everything foil under €5 — and it updates itself as your collection grows. Or curate a list by hand. Give each one its own icon and colour. — YOUR CARDS, FULL SCREEN — A gallery mode built for staring at cardboard. High-resolution art, glowing foil borders on your foils, pinch to zoom into the tiniest detail, swipe from card to card. Double-faced cards flip with a tap. — EVEN BETTER TOGETHER — Join the Decksmith Community and the app opens up: publish decks with one tap, collect likes and comments, follow the players whose brews you love, browse their collections and decks for inspiration, send friend requests, and keep up with everything in a live activity feed. — PRIVACY YOU ACTUALLY CONTROL — The whole app works offline, with no account and no sign-up — your collection lives on your device. Create an account only if you want cloud sync across your iPhone and iPad, or the community features. Then decide exactly what is visible: profile visibility, whether you are discoverable, and whether new decks default to public or private. Block anyone. Export or delete your data at any time. — IMPORT AND EXPORT, NO LOCK-IN — Bring your collection with you via CSV from the popular collection and deck-building sites, or restore a full Decksmith backup — collection, decks and lists included. Export your data to a single file whenever you like and share it via AirDrop, mail or cloud storage. — BUILT LIKE AN APPLE APP — Written from scratch in SwiftUI. Dark from the first pixel, tuned for 120 Hz, alive with haptics, and quick everywhere it counts. No subscription. No ads. No account required. Card data and images provided by Scryfall. Decksmith is an unofficial fan app and is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by Wizards of the Coast. Magic: The Gathering is © Wizards of the Coast LLC. Start scanning. Start building.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: Decksmith at 100% against Card Binder's 59%. Decksmith also leads on rating (5.0 vs 4.5) and in-app purchases (none vs 2). Card Binder's advantage is ratings volume (537 vs 1). On price, update cadence, ads and device support 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. Card Binder sells 2 one-off in-app purchases. Decksmith asks for nothing beyond the download.
Decksmith holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.5. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Card Binder has 537 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 59% of Card Binder's written reviews are positive against 100% of Decksmith's.
Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on September 27, 2026 and August 21, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Card Binder | Decksmith |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.5 (537 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 59.3% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 537 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 weeks | Every 3 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 17.6 — better | 18.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 132 MB | 24 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 9+ |
| Developer | Nicolas Yuste Tirados | Waldemar Schneider |
Customer experience
Card Binder
Decksmith
Bugs and requests
Card Binder
Reported bugs
4 issues- Inability to recognize certain card names
- Disappearing foil card data
- Deck building issues with commander cards
- Inconsistent set recognition
Requested features
5 requests- Ability to filter cards by set
- Option to add custom tags to cards
- Bulk card addition to decks
- Wishlist functionality
- Improved sorting and organization tools
Decksmith
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Card Binder
- Space for 100 cards$0.99
- Space for 1000 cards$4.99
Decksmith
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Card Binder free?
Is Decksmith free?
Which has better reviews, Card Binder or Decksmith?
Do Card Binder or Decksmith have ads?
Which is updated more often, Card Binder or Decksmith?
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