Trading Card API
Updated . Plan numbers are the ones on the developers page that day; the live plans table wins if they ever disagree.
Quick answer
The HobbyCardIndex trading card API covers sports cards and trading card games in one REST API: 16 million-plus cards, 22 million-plus raw and graded prices, sold sales, cert lookups and photo identification across 25-plus categories, with the key in an X-API-Key header. Plans start at $99 a month, with a free setup month by application.
One card API, every category
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.
The categories you'd expect are all under the same key: baseball, basketball, football, hockey, soccer, UFC, golf, racing, boxing, wrestling and multi-sport on the sports side; Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh, One Piece, Disney Lorcana, Dragon Ball and Digimon on the TCG side, with Marvel, Star Wars, Disney and Garbage Pail Kids alongside. GET /api/v1/market/categories returns the live list with a card count per category, and every search, set list, movers call and scan takes a category to narrow it.
GET /prices/searchandGET /sets: find cards and list sets in any category, paged 25 at a time.GET /prices/{cardId},/sales,/history,/population: one card's prices at every grade, its sold sales, its daily history and its pop report.GET /certs/{grader}/{certNumber}: PSA, BGS, CGC and SGC certs resolved to the card and its price at that grade.POST /scan: photo identification of raw cards and slabs in every category.POST /watchlist,PUT /webhook,GET /watchlist/prices: follow cards, sets or a whole category and get the price changes once a day.POST /mcp: the same data for AI assistants over the Model Context Protocol.
Try it: a TCG card by name
curl 'https://hobbycardindex.com/api/v1/prices/search?q=Monkey%20D%20Luffy%20OP01-003' \
-H 'X-API-Key: hci_live_...'{
"results": [
{
"id": 45678,
"externalId": "56789",
"name": "Monkey.D.Luffy [Alternate Art] #OP01-003",
"year": 2022,
"setName": "One Piece Romance Dawn",
"cardNumber": "OP01-003",
"printRun": null,
"category": "One Piece",
"playerName": "Monkey.D.Luffy",
"imageUrl": "https://hobbycardindex.com/api/v1/images/proxy?i=...",
"addedAt": "2023-01-18T09:12:44Z",
"prices": {
"loose": 74,
"psa10": 260,
"psa9": 110,
"psa8": null,
"psa7": null,
"bgs10": null,
"cgc10": 180,
"sgc10": null,
"volume": 410
},
"hciUrl": "https://hobbycardindex.com/cards/45678"
}
],
"count": 10
}Example values, not live prices. The bracketed part of a name is the parallel; the base card has no brackets.
TCG card API: what's in the games
More than 350,000 TCG cards are in the catalog: about 96,000 Pokémon, 133,000 Magic: The Gathering, 79,000 Yu-Gi-Oh, 20,000 Dragon Ball, 12,600 One Piece, 7,000 Digimon and 5,600 Disney Lorcana, plus the Marvel, Star Wars, Disney and Garbage Pail Kids sets. Sports cards make up the rest of the 16 million, and the graded data runs deepest there. The Pokémon and Magic pages go into each game; the TCG overview shows how the games trade against each other, and the trading card database hub is the same catalog you can browse without a key.
Use it from an AI assistant
The MCP server at https://hobbycardindex.com/api/v1/mcp speaks Streamable HTTP and takes the same key as the REST API, with the same plan and limits. Its search_cards tool finds a card the way a collector describes it and get_card_prices returns one card at every grade; list_plans and start_checkout work without a key so an assistant can buy a plan for you. Claude Code, Cursor and VS Code each connect with one config entry, shown on the developers page.
What you get
- 16 million-plus cards and 22 million-plus prices, raw and graded, refreshed daily, across 25-plus categories.
- Eight price lanes per card: raw, PSA 10, 9, 8 and 7, BGS 9.5, CGC 10 and SGC 10.
- Sold sales per card with sale type, bids, marketplace and listing link. See the sold comps page.
- Cert lookups for PSA, BGS, CGC and SGC, pop reports on Platform or with the add-on. See the cert lookup page.
- Photo identification of raw cards and slabs with up to seven alternatives. See the card scanner page.
- Set lists, movers, a watch list webhook, daily price files on Platform, and an MCP server.
Plans and prices
| Plan | Price | Requests a month | Photo scans | Sold-sale lookups | Cert lookups | Lookups a second | Past the requests and scans (up to 3x) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lite | $99 a month | 25,000 | 25,000 | 5,000 | 150 | 10 | $1 per 250 more |
| Growth Lite | $249 a month | 125,000 | 125,000 | 25,000 | 750 | 15 | $1 per 500 more |
| Growth | $499 a month | 500,000 | 500,000 | 100,000 | 3,000 | 20 | $1 per 1,000 more |
| Platform | from $1,500 a month | 2,000,000 | 1,500,000 | 500,000 | 50,000, plus 50,000 pop reports | 50 | Set up with Sean, invoiced; bulk price files included |
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.
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
What is a trading card API?
A trading card API is a web service that returns card data over HTTP: card records, current prices, sold sales, set lists and sometimes photo identification, so you can build them into your own app. The HobbyCardIndex API does all of those for sports cards and trading card games with one key, sent as an X-API-Key header.
Which card games does the TCG API cover?
Pokémon (about 96,000 cards), Magic: The Gathering (133,000), Yu-Gi-Oh (79,000), Dragon Ball (20,000), One Piece (12,600), Digimon (7,000) and Disney Lorcana (5,600), plus Marvel, Star Wars, Disney and Garbage Pail Kids, more than 350,000 TCG cards in all. Sports cards make up the rest of the 16 million-plus catalog.
Does the card API have an MCP server for AI assistants?
Yes. The MCP server at https://hobbycardindex.com/api/v1/mcp speaks Streamable HTTP and takes the same key as the REST API. Its search_cards and get_card_prices tools look cards up and return prices at every grade; list_plans and start_checkout work without a key. Claude Code, Cursor and VS Code connect with one config entry.
How much does the trading card 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, and includes bulk price files. A free setup month is available by application.
Can I show the card data to my users?
Yes, on a commercial plan. Lite, Growth Lite, Growth and Platform license the data for apps, websites and other products your users see, and you may store prices and price history while the plan is active. The terms ask for one visible credit, Prices from Hobby Card Index, with a link. An Enterprise key covers your own internal use only.
How do I get a card API key?
Sign in, open Settings, then API Access, and either apply for the free setup month or pick a size and pay by card, then click Generate API Key. The key is shown once, so copy it; each account has one active key and a new one replaces the old. An AI assistant can buy a plan through the MCP server.