How to choose a card scanner app.

Updated August 2026

Identification is not the same as scanning

Every scanner app will recognise a card. The question is how precisely. Recognising that you are holding a particular character is easy and almost useless, because that character may exist as a common, a reverse holo, a full art and an alternate art across several sets, at prices ranging from a few cents to several hundred euros.

What you actually need is identification down to the printing: the right set, the right card number, the right treatment. Test this before you commit. Scan a card that exists in multiple printings and check whether the app returns the exact one in your hand or something merely plausible. An app that is fast and wrong will quietly fill your collection with prices that belong to other cards.

Which market, and in which currency

This is the criterion most people never think about and most regret ignoring. Card prices are not global. The same card trades at genuinely different levels in Europe, the United States and Japan, driven by different supply and different buyers.

An app built around US marketplace data can convert its figures into euros, and the result will look like a European price while being nothing of the kind. If you buy and sell in Europe, you want prices sourced from European sales in euros. If you trade in the US, the reverse applies. Check what the source actually is rather than which currency symbol it can display.

What sits around the number

A single price is easy to show and easy to misread. Two cards displaying €40 are not equivalent if one sells several times a week and the other has not sold in two months — the second figure is an asking price with nobody behind it.

So look for what the app puts next to the headline: whether prices are broken down by condition, whether you can see how often the card actually sells rather than how many are listed, whether there is price history rather than a snapshot, and whether graded prices are shown separately from raw ones instead of blended into an average.

Bulk handling

Scanning one card is a demo. Scanning six hundred is the actual job. Ask whether the app can identify several cards in one camera frame, how quickly you can confirm and save a match, and whether the flow assumes you will stop to admire each card. The gap between apps here is enormous and it is invisible until you sit down with a real stack.

Export, and what happens if you stop paying

Catalogue three thousand cards and you have created something valuable that lives inside someone else's app. Two questions follow, and both are worth answering before you start rather than after.

Can you export your collection to CSV, and is that export free or behind the subscription? And if you cancel, does your collection stay readable or does it lock? An app that holds your catalogue hostage has a great deal of leverage over you at renewal time.

How the paywall is drawn

Free tiers vary from generous to decorative. What matters is not whether there is a free tier but where the line falls: some apps limit how many cards you can own, others limit how many scans you get, others give you everything but hold back the market detail. Work out which limit you will hit first, because that is the one that will decide whether you pay.

Where Scadex is a good fit

Since we are asking you to apply these criteria, it is only fair to apply them to ourselves.

Scadex suits you if you collect Pokémon, One Piece, Lorcana or Dragon Ball and you trade in Europe. Prices are euro figures from European market data rather than converted dollars, identification works down to the printing and card number, and the free tier includes the things people most often expect to pay for: collection tracking, portfolio value and its history, set completion progress, sealed product, and CSV export. The market depth — condition ladders, how often a card sells, the full price chart, multi-card scanning — is what Pro is for.

Where Scadex is the wrong choice

Genuinely, in these cases you should use something else.

• You trade primarily in the US market. Everything here is built around European pricing. An app sourced from US marketplace data will serve you better.
• You need per-copy condition tracking. Cards you own are recorded as raw or graded. There is no raw condition field per copy, so a Near Mint and a Played copy of the same card are stored identically. If you run a resale inventory, this will not work for you.
• You want a deck builder. Scadex does not build decks. It is a scanner and a collection tracker.
• You want to buy and sell in the app. There is no marketplace inside Scadex, and no listings to manage.
• You want to work on a computer. Scadex is an iOS and Android app. There is no web version and no browser-based card lookup.
• You collect games we do not cover. If your collection is mainly Magic or Yu-Gi-Oh, Scadex is not for you today.

None of that is likely to change tomorrow, so it is better said here than discovered after you have scanned a thousand cards.