CardWisp vs Cauldron
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
CardWisp
Manage your Magic: The Gathering game night with this all-in-one companion app. Track life totals for multiple players, build and refine decks with powerful tools, and easily scan and organize your card collection.
- Multiplayer life tracking
- Commander damage matrix
- Full deck builder with Scryfall search
- Card collection scanner (OCR)
- Binder organization
- Foil tracking
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Organize the Chaos. Master the Game. CardWisp is a Magic: The Gathering companion that does the whole job: build decks for any format, get card suggestions that understand your deck, scan and price your collection, and track life for your whole table. All in one app, with the core features free. CARD SUGGESTIONS (FREE) • Reads your whole deck, not just your commander, and spots its themes: tokens, graveyard, blink, poison, voltron, creature types, and more • Add or remove themes to steer what you see • Deck Needs shows where you are short on ramp, card draw, removal, board wipes, and protection • Combos already in your deck, plus combos that fit your themes and are one card away • Filter by budget or by cards you already own, and match your bracket DECK BUILDER • 13 formats: Commander, Brawl, Standard Brawl, Oathbreaker, Pauper Commander, Standard, Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, Vintage, Pauper, Historic, and Timeless • Deck check flags size, copy limits, and banned cards, and ban lists stay current on their own • Commander Brackets worked out automatically and kept up to date, or set your own • Partner, Friends Forever, Background, and Doctor commander pairs • Do I own this deck? See how many cards you own, what is missing, and what the rest will cost • Share any deck with a link or QR code. The web page updates when you edit the deck • Live Scryfall search, Moxfield and Archidekt import, export, mana curve, and mana base analysis LIFE TRACKER • 2 to 6 players, with portrait or landscape layouts • Commander damage, poison, energy, experience, and monarch • Player profiles with any card art as the avatar, synced to your account • "Who goes first" D20, plus a full DnD dice roller CARD SCANNER AND COLLECTION • Point your camera at a card and CardWisp reads the exact printing right on your device • Hands-free bulk scanning: press play and feed cards through • Every scan waits in a review tray, so you can fix foil, printing, or a wrong match first • Scan straight into a binder • Collection value with separate foil pricing • Free CSV export of your collection or any binder PLAYTEST AND DRAW ODDS (PRO) • Goldfish any deck solo: draw, scry, surveil, mill, tokens, counters, and transform cards • Simulate hundreds of opening hands to see your land odds and mulligan calls FREE • 500 unique cards, 10 decks, and 25 scans a day • Card Suggestions, every format, sharing, and CSV export • The Life Tracker, with up to 4 saved player profiles PRO • Monthly $1.99, Yearly $19.99, or Lifetime $79.99 (one-time, no subscription) • Unlimited collection, decks, scans, and player profiles • Playtest and Draw Odds PRIVACY CardWisp doesn't sell your data, doesn't use advertising trackers, and doesn't share your collection with anyone. Card scan images are processed and discarded, never stored. TERMS OF USE CardWisp uses Apple's Standard End User License Agreement: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ CardWisp is an independent fan project. Magic: The Gathering and all related card names and images are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC. CardWisp is not produced, endorsed, or supported by Wizards of the Coast.
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.
- 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
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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
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Cauldron at none against CardWisp's 3. Cauldron also leads on update cadence (every 3 days vs every 3 weeks) and ratings volume (53 vs 10). On price, rating, review sentiment and ads 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. CardWisp sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $1.99 per month. Cauldron asks for nothing beyond the download.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for CardWisp against 5.0 for Cauldron. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Cauldron has 53 ratings behind it against 10, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews split almost evenly too, at 100% and 100% positive.
CardWisp ships an update every 3 weeks, Cauldron every 3 days. The most recent releases landed on November 5, 2026 and November 6, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | CardWisp | Cauldron |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (10 ratings) — better | 5.0 (53 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 10 | 53 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 3 weeks | Every 3 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Freemium | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPad — better |
| Requires iOS | 16.0 | 16.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 83 MB | 93 MB |
| Age rating | 9+ | 12+ |
| Developer | Jimiai Ajikaia | Joseph Liechty |
Customer experience
CardWisp
Cauldron
In-app purchases
CardWisp
- Pro Monthly$1.991 Month
- Pro Yearly7 Days trial$19.991 Year
- Pro Lifetime$79.99
Cauldron
No in-app purchases









