Card Ladder API Alternative

Updated November 1, 2026. Plan numbers are the ones on the developers page that day; the live plans table wins if they ever disagree.

What people searching for a Card Ladder API want

Card Ladder is a collection tracker and price-history app for sports cards. Its site lists the app and its subscription, and as of November 1, 2026 we couldn't find developer documentation, API keys or pricing for programmatic access on it. If you've seen otherwise, trust their pages over ours. The searches that land here are from people building something and wanting the pieces that make Card Ladder useful: a price line per card and grade over time, the sales behind it, a gainers and losers list, a collection total that updates on its own, and lately a way to identify cards from photos. Those are the pieces below.

What the HobbyCardIndex API gives you instead

Everything lives under https://hobbycardindex.com/api/v1/ and takes your key in an X-API-Key header (an Authorization: Bearer header works too). Every successful response is wrapped as {"success": true, "data": {...}}; the examples on this page show what sits inside data. Prices are US dollars with two decimals.

• GET /prices/{cardId}/history: the card's daily price at every grade for up to ten years, built for charts. The example below.
• GET /prices/{cardId} and GET /prices/search: current prices at raw, PSA 10, 9, 8 and 7, BGS 9.5, CGC 10 and SGC 10, with volume and last update, for a collection valuer.
• GET /prices/{cardId}/sales: the sold sales behind the price, by grade, with sale type and listing links. See the sold comps page.
• GET /market/movers?category=&period=: the ten biggest risers and fallers in a category over a day, week or month, rebuilt every six hours.
• POST /watchlist and PUT /webhook: follow the cards in a collection and get one signed POST a day with every price that changed, so a collection total updates without polling.
• POST /scan and GET /certs/{grader}/{certNumber}: intake by photo or cert number. See the card scanner and cert lookup pages.

Try it: a year of daily prices at every grade

curl 'https://hobbycardindex.com/api/v1/prices/12345/history?days=365' \
  -H 'X-API-Key: hci_live_...'

{
  "card": {
    "id": 12345,
    "externalId": "67890",
    "name": "Mike Trout #US175",
    "year": 2011,
    "setName": "Topps Update",
    "category": "Baseball",
    "playerName": "Mike Trout"
  },
  "days": 365,
  "history": [
    {
      "date": "2026-10-30",
      "loose": 293,
      "psa10": 4500,
      "psa9": 1250,
      "psa8": 640,
      "psa7": null,
      "bgs10": 3900,
      "cgc10": 2100,
      "sgc10": 2400,
      "volume": 1400
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-10-29",
      "loose": 291,
      "psa10": 4480,
      "psa9": 1250,
      "psa8": 640,
      "psa7": null,
      "bgs10": 3900,
      "cgc10": 2100,
      "sgc10": 2380,
      "volume": 1396
    }
  ],
  "count": 312
}

Example values, not live prices. A grade with no price on a day is null, never zero, and days we hold no prices for are left out, so count can be under 365.

Where Card Ladder is the better fit

If you're a collector who wants to track a collection on a phone with charts already drawn, Card Ladder is a finished app and you don't need an API at all; the HobbyCardIndex app is our version of the same thing, and the HobbyCardIndex vs Card Ladder page compares them as apps. Card Ladder's indexes and curated sales are theirs, and this API doesn't reproduce them. What it does is give you the raw material, daily prices and sales on a 16 million-plus card catalog across sports and TCGs, so the charts, indexes and totals you build are your own. Our history goes back as far as we've held prices for a card, up to 3,650 days per call, and our movers are by category, not a hand-picked list.

What you get

• Daily price history at eight grades for up to ten years, per card.
• Current prices with volume and last update, for a collection valuer or a price grid.
• Sold sales per card and grade with sale type, bids and listing links.
• Market movers by category, and a watch list webhook for the cards in a collection.
• Photo identification and cert lookups for intake.
• Sports cards and TCGs on one key. See the sports card API page.

Plans and prices

Price history comes with every size. Sold-sale, cert and pop lookups stop at the plan's number and never run over. Two add-ons: pop reports plus cert lookups for $100 a month, which brings 32,000 of each to Lite, Growth Lite or Growth, and the daily price files for $450 a month on Growth Lite or Growth (included in Platform, not offered on Lite). Lite, Growth Lite and Growth are month to month by card, cancelled any time in Settings, API Access, and run to the end of the paid month.

The free setup month is 30 days on real data with no card: 1,000 requests and 1,000 photo scans a day, 500 sold-sale lookups and 100 cert lookups for the month. You apply in Settings, API Access once you're signed in, and Sean reviews each one. When the 30 days end, the first month of the plan you applied with is invoiced, and paying it keeps the key going. Full plan details are on the developers page.

Apply for a free setup month

Credit and data use

A commercial plan licenses the data for a product your users see. You can store the prices and price history you pull while the plan is active and use them on card pages, in charts, collection values and your own estimates. Sold-sale records can be shown to your users and kept in your product, but not turned into a standalone sales database, copied by the category or offered as a download. Card recognition stays with the scan endpoint: show our identifications, don't use them to build a recognizer of your own.

The terms ask for one link back to us somewhere on your site, such as "Prices and API supplied by Hobby Card Index". It does not need to be beside the prices or on your main page. When a plan ends, stored copies go within 30 days. The full wording is in the Terms of Service, section 8, and the shorter version is under Data use on the developers page.

Common questions

Does Card Ladder have an API?

Not a public one, as of November 2026. Card Ladder's site lists its app and subscription, and we couldn't find developer documentation, API keys or pricing for programmatic access. If you've seen otherwise, go with their pages over ours. The HobbyCardIndex API is a documented REST API with public plans and a free setup month.

What can I build with the HobbyCardIndex API instead?

Price charts from daily history at every grade, a collection valuer from current prices, sold-comp lists from the sales endpoint, a gainers and losers feed from market movers, and a price-change feed from the watch list webhook. It also covers photo identification and cert lookups, which a tracker built on it can use for intake.

How far back does the price history go?

Up to 3,650 days per call, 365 by default, as far back as we have held prices for that card. Each day carries the raw, PSA 10, 9, 8 and 7, BGS 9.5, CGC 10 and SGC 10 prices plus volume. A grade with no price is null, never zero, and empty days are left out.

Does the API have market movers like Card Ladder's gainers and losers?

Yes. GET /api/v1/market/movers?category=baseball&period=7 returns the 10 biggest risers then the 10 biggest fallers in a category by the change in raw price over the period against the period before, with each card's prices and card page link. The list is rebuilt every 6 hours, and updatedAt says when.

Is this a replacement for the Card Ladder app?

Not for a collector who just wants to track a collection on a phone; Card Ladder is a finished app and the HobbyCardIndex app is our version of that. This API is for people building their own product who went looking for a Card Ladder API and found none. It gives you the data; the app is yours to build.

How much does the HobbyCardIndex API cost?

Commercial plans start at $99 a month for Lite: 25,000 requests, 25,000 photo scans, 5,000 sold-sale lookups and 150 cert lookups. Growth Lite is $249 and Growth $499, both month to month by card. Platform starts at $1,500 a month, invoiced, with bulk price files. A free setup month on real data is available by application.