Trading Card Recognition APIs Compared: Cost per Scan (2026)

A trading card recognition API takes a photo of a card and returns which card it is. We compared the five services that sell one to developers as of October 2026. Per scan, CardSight is the cheapest at 0.2–0.3¢, but it covers three card games and returns no prices. Ximilar costs 0.36–1.1¢. TCG API costs 0.8–1.5¢ with prices included. Scrydex costs 0.8–2.9¢. CardGrader costs 12–20¢.

Price per scan is only half of the decision. The other half is what the scan gets right: whether it can tell a 1st Edition from an Unlimited card, whether it covers the games your users collect, and whether the answer comes back with an ID and a price your app can use. This guide compares all five on those points, using each company’s published pricing and documentation on October 14, 2026.

Disclosure: TCG API is our product. We launched photo identification today, and this comparison includes it. Every competitor figure links to its source.

The short version

Costs are for identifying one card. The low end of each range is the vendor’s largest plan or pack, the high end its smallest. Speeds are the vendors’ own figures, except ours, which we timed on live requests.

Two ways to recognise a card

The services split into two designs, and the design explains most of the price and speed differences.

Image matching. The photo is turned into a numerical fingerprint and compared with a library of reference images. Ximilar describes its system as a similarity search, because a standard classifier struggles when every card is its own class. Scrydex describes a score that “combines visual similarity with data verification”. CardSight describes custom computer vision that finds every card in a photo at once. Image matching runs on the vendor’s own servers, which is why it is fast and cheap per scan.

Its weak spot is printings that share a picture. A 1st Edition and an Unlimited card, a holo and a reverse holo, a prerelease stamp, a Pokemon Center exclusive and a reprint can all have the same artwork. Scrydex, for example, returns a variant only when its confidence is high.

Reading the card. TCG API sends the photo to a vision AI model that reads what is printed: name, collector number or card code, set, edition stamp, foil and the grade on a slab. That read is then matched against our catalog by printed number first. Reading is slower and costs more per scan, because every photo goes through a large AI model. It resolves the printing problem, because the number and stamp decide the match.

Each service in detail

CardSight

CardSight began with sports cards and added Pokemon, Magic and One Piece. Plans are monthly: 750 calls free, 5,000 for $14.95, 30,000 for $74.95 and 100,000 for $199.95, with overage from $0.002 to $0.003 per call. It can find several cards in one photo, and it publishes 99.5% accuracy and responses under 400 ms. The pricing page does not say whether one identification is one call.

Pick it if you scan sports cards or the three card games it covers, and need speed and low cost more than prices in the same response.

Ximilar

Ximilar bills in credits. Identifying a trading card costs 10 credits, and adding a price lookup costs another 10. Monthly plans run from $69 for 100,000 credits (10,000 cards, 0.69¢ each) down to about 0.36¢ per card on its larger plans. Credit packs that never expire start at $11 for 10,000 credits. Its card recognition covers the major games and keeps adding new ones, and it reads graded slabs.

Pick it if you want a mature recognition service across many games and are happy to pay per credit for prices.

Scrydex

Scrydex charges 5 credits per Vision request on monthly credit plans: $29 for 5,000 credits (1,000 scans), $99 for 50,000 and $399 for 250,000. Its Vision API covers six games, reads graded slabs and returns candidates with a confidence score, with the variant only when the confidence is high. It typically answers in 1–3 seconds.

Pick it if you already use Scrydex for card data and your games are on its list.

CardGrader

CardGrader is a grading tool first. Identification costs one credit, sold in packs from $5 for 25 credits, which works out at 12–20¢ per card. That makes it the most expensive option for identification alone. It is aimed at apps that also want a grade estimate.

TCG API

TCG API identifies cards, graded slabs and sealed products for every game in our catalog. Each scan uses one prepaid scan: 25 free scans once, then packs of 1,000 for $15 down to 100,000 for $800 (0.8¢ each), which never expire. AI agents can pay $0.02 per photo in USDC with x402. Add include=prices and the top match comes back with its current market, low and lowest-with-shipping prices at no extra charge.

Each answer has a status. matched means exactly one printing fits. ambiguous comes back with the candidates when several printings fit. retake comes back with a message when the photo is blurred or glare covers the number.

We measured it on October 14, 2026. On 81 real phone photos of Pokemon cards and sealed products, it confirmed the right item 88% of the time and listed it among the candidates every time, with no wrong matches. On catalog photos from every game, the right card was among the candidates 92% of the time. Most misses were versions that share one printed number.

The trade-offs: it is the slowest of the five at about 3.5 seconds a photo, it does not find several cards in one photo, and per scan it costs several times what CardSight charges.

Pick it if your users collect beyond the big three games, you need the exact printing rather than the closest artwork, or you want the TCGPlayer ID and price without a second API.

How to choose

Try it

curl -X POST "https://api.tcgapi.dev/v1/identify?include=prices" \
  -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" \
  -F "[email protected]"

A free API key comes with 25 scans. The card scanner guide walks through building a scanning app, and the Identify reference has every field and status.