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TCG API
· 8 min read

Migrating Off the TCGPlayer API: A Working Code Walkthrough

Port your TCGPlayer API integration to TCG API endpoint by endpoint — request mapping, response shape changes, and the four errors that bite most people during the switch.

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If you’ve tried to get access to the TCGPlayer API recently, you already know the problem: TCGPlayer closed API access to new developers. No application form, no waitlist — just a dead end.

This post is the hands-on half of that story: how to actually port working code off the TCGPlayer API. If you are still deciding whether to switch, read TCG API vs TCGPlayer API first — it covers coverage, freshness, and cost side by side. Come back here when you want the diff.

Everything below is a real request mapping, not a summary. Skip to Common errors when migrating if something already broke.

What you’re migrating to

TCG API was built specifically because TCGPlayer closed their doors. Here’s what we offer:

Game coverage

While most alternatives focus on 1-3 games, TCG API covers every game on TCGPlayer — all 54 of them. That includes:

  • Pokemon — 200+ sets, 30,000+ cards
  • Magic: The Gathering — 430+ sets, 110,000+ cards
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! — 600+ sets, 45,000+ cards
  • Disney Lorcana — All sets, updated daily
  • One Piece Card Game — All sets, updated daily
  • Flesh and Blood — All sets, updated daily
  • Star Wars: Unlimited, Digimon, Dragon Ball Super, Weiss Schwarz, and 58 more

Browse all supported games at tcgapi.dev/games.

Daily Pricing with Per-Printing Data

Every card has separate pricing for each printing type:

{
  "name": "Charizard ex",
  "set_name": "Obsidian Flames",
  "prices": [
    {
      "printing": "Normal",
      "market_price": 12.45,
      "low_price": 10.99,
      "median_price": 12.50,
      "price_change_24h": 2.89,
      "price_change_7d": -6.04,
      "price_change_30d": 20.87
    },
    {
      "printing": "Holofoil",
      "market_price": 45.99,
      "low_price": 42.00,
      "median_price": 46.50,
      "price_change_24h": 2.68
    }
  ]
}

prices is an array with one entry per printing. The price_change_* fields are percentages, tracked across 24-hour, 7-day, and 30-day windows — no need to store historical data yourself (though we offer that on Pro plans too).

The shape of a request

No OAuth, no API application process, no approval wait. Sign up, get a key, start making requests:

Terminal window
# Search for any card across all games
curl "https://api.tcgapi.dev/v1/search?q=charizard"


# Get all Pokemon sets
curl "https://api.tcgapi.dev/v1/games/pokemon/sets"


# Get prices for a specific card
curl "https://api.tcgapi.dev/v1/cards/12345" \
  -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY"

JavaScript:

const response = await fetch(
  'https://api.tcgapi.dev/v1/search?q=charizard&game=pokemon',
  { headers: { 'X-API-Key': 'YOUR_API_KEY' } }
);
const data = await response.json();
console.log(data.data[0].market_price); // search rows are flat: printing + market_price

Python:

import requests


response = requests.get(
    'https://api.tcgapi.dev/v1/search',
    params={'q': 'charizard', 'game': 'pokemon'},
    headers={'X-API-Key': 'YOUR_API_KEY'}
)
cards = response.json()['data']
print(cards[0]['market_price'])  # search rows are flat: printing + market_price

Before you start

Two things worth knowing up front, because they cause most of the confusion:

  • Auth is a static header, not OAuth. No token refresh, no client-credentials dance.
  • Prices are per printing. A card is not one price; Normal and Foil are separate rows with separate markets.

Feature-by-feature coverage, rate limits and plan costs are on the comparison page and pricing page — this post assumes you have already decided to move.

Migration Guide: TCGPlayer API → TCG API

If you have existing code that used the TCGPlayer API, here’s how the endpoints map:

Listing Games/Categories

Terminal window
# TCGPlayer (old)
GET /catalog/categories


# TCG API
GET /v1/games

Searching Cards

Terminal window
# TCGPlayer (old)
GET /catalog/products?categoryId=1&productName=charizard


# TCG API
GET /v1/search?q=charizard&game=pokemon

Getting Prices

Terminal window
# TCGPlayer (old)
GET /pricing/product/12345


# TCG API
GET /v1/cards/12345
# (prices included in card response)

The response formats are similar but simplified. Check our Quick Start guide for a complete walkthrough.

What Developers Are Building

Since launching, developers have used TCG API to build:

  • Price tracking bots for Discord and Telegram
  • Collection managers that track portfolio value across games
  • Store pricing tools that auto-update inventory prices
  • Arbitrage finders that compare prices across platforms
  • Deck builders with up-to-date price estimates
  • Investment trackers for sealed product prices

Get Started in 2 Minutes

  1. Sign up at tcgapi.dev/signup (no credit card required)
  2. Get your API key from the dashboard
  3. Make your first request — try searching for your favorite card
  4. Read the docs at tcgapi.dev/introduction

The free tier gives you 100 requests per day — enough to build and test your entire integration before committing to a paid plan.

Common errors when migrating

These are the three gotchas that catch almost every team moving off the TCGPlayer API:

1. 401 Unauthorized after copy-pasting the Bearer example

TCGPlayer used OAuth 2.0 with Authorization: Bearer <access_token> where the access token was refreshed from a client-credentials flow. TCG API uses a static X-API-Key header — the word “Bearer” is nowhere in the mix.

headers = {"Authorization": "Bearer eyJhbGciOi..."}
headers = {"X-API-Key": "tcg_live_xxxxxxxxxxxxx"}

If you hit 401 with a fresh key, this is 90% of the time the reason.

2. productId became id (and tcgplayer_id is separate)

The old TCGPlayer API used productId as the identifier. TCG API has its own internal id and tracks the original TCGPlayer product ID as a separate tcgplayer_id field. If you are migrating a catalog that stored TCGPlayer product IDs, use the lookup-by-TCGPlayer-ID endpoint to resolve them cleanly:

Terminal window
# Old: look up product by TCGPlayer productId
GET /catalog/products/12345


# New: look up by TCGPlayer ID directly (returns TCG API card data)
GET /v1/cards/tcgplayer/12345

3. Sealed products appeared as Normal printing (fixed in March 2026)

Until March 28 2026, sealed products (booster boxes, ETBs) were returning printing: "Normal" instead of printing: "Sealed". If your integration filtered by printing, you may have accidentally excluded sealed inventory. This is fixed on the live API — just make sure your client isn’t caching the old response shape.

4. Rate-limit semantics are daily, not per-second

TCGPlayer’s rate limit was requests-per-second with bursts. TCG API’s rate limit is requests-per-day that reset at UTC midnight. You do not need exponential-backoff logic on every request — you need a daily-budget monitor. A simple X-RateLimit-Remaining header check at the start of a long-running job is enough to plan your batch size.

Webhooks and event-driven integrations

TCG API does not yet offer webhooks, which is the one area where the old TCGPlayer API had a clear edge. The current workaround: hit /v1/prices/top-movers once per hour to see which cards moved significantly since the last refresh. For store inventory tooling where you mostly care about your existing stock, a batch GET /v1/bulk/prices?ids=… on a cron schedule is more efficient than a webhook firehose anyway.

Webhook support is on the roadmap; subscribe to the changelog to hear when it ships.

Have questions? Join our Discord community or email us at [email protected].

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