Welcome to MTG Codex
MTG Codex started as a weekend project for tracking a growing Magic collection that had gotten completely out of hand — cards stuffed in boxes, decks half-built, no idea what anything was worth. It became something a lot more useful. Today it's a full-featured companion for collecting, building decks, scanning cards with your phone, and keeping up with prices, all backed by a complete database of over 110,000 card printings.
This guide will get you up and running in a few minutes.
Creating Your Account
Head to the Login page and click Register. You'll need an email address and a password (at least 10 characters). After you register, check your inbox for a verification email — click the link to activate your account, and you're in. The link expires after 24 hours, so if you missed it, the login page has a "Resend Verification Email" button.
Your First Cards
There are three ways to start building your collection, and which one you use depends on how your collection is currently organized:
Scan with your phone. This is by far the fastest way to catalog physical cards. Open the Scanner, point your camera at a card, and tap to capture. The AI identifies the printing in under a second. If you've got a big pile to go through, set up the phone-to-desktop scanning workflow — it's genuinely satisfying to watch cards fly in on your screen while you flip through a stack on your desk. See the [AI Scanner](#scanner) section for the full rundown.
Search and add manually. Use the Search page to find any card and click the + button. Good for adding individual cards or small numbers of specific printings.
Import from another app. If you're already on Moxfield, Archidekt, Manabox, or a few others, you can upload a CSV export and have your full collection in here in about 30 seconds. See the [CSV Import](#csv-import) section.
Finding Your Way Around
The sidebar on the left is how you navigate the app. You can collapse it to just icons, or expand it to see the full labels. It remembers which state you left it in, so you won't have to collapse it every time.
On mobile, a bottom nav bar gives you quick one-tap access to Collection, Search, Scanner, Queue, and Decks. Every other page is still accessible from the sidebar (which slides in from the left on small screens).
What's Available
Here's the short version of what you can do:
Collection — Your full card inventory with filtering, editing, binders, bulk actions, and deck usage tracking
AI Scanner — Camera-based card identification for quick cataloging of physical cards
Deck Builder — Build and manage decks across Commander, Standard, Modern, Pioneer, Legacy, and Casual, with full collection integration
Search — Look up any card ever printed, see prices, add to your collection or deck
Binders — Organize cards into color-coded groups, just like physical binder dividers
Public Profiles — Share your collection, decks, tradelist, or wishlist with whoever you want (or nobody — it's all off by default)
Pricing — Daily-updated market prices everywhere, with a live total for your collection's value
Community — Direct messages, deck comments, trade interest, and notifications for connecting with other users (opt-in)