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Public API

Last updated: October 5, 2026

The Index's headline price and expected-value data is available as a free, read-only JSON API with no API key or signup. Bulk sealed-model output uses a separate server credential. Three endpoints cover card prices, sealed EV, and card search. If you'd rather not write HTTP calls at all, there's an MCP server that plugs the same data into Claude, ChatGPT, and other AI assistants.

Ground rules

Attribution required. Every response includes source, url, and terms fields. If you display or republish this data, credit "TCG Strat" and link to the url in the payload. That's the whole price of admission.

Data updates daily. Prices sync from TCGplayer, Card Kingdom, Cardsphere, and Cardmarket nightly. Responses are edge-cached for one hour, so polling more often than that just gets you the same cached bytes.

Fair use. Free for non-commercial use. Keep request volume reasonable (the cache means you rarely need more than one request per query per hour). Anonymous REST access allows up to 600 uncached function requests per 10 minutes and 5,000 per UTC day per client; MCP's shared-service allowance is twice that. Bulk scraping, resale of the raw data, or hammering the origin will get an IP rate-limited or blocked. For commercial licensing, get in touch.

None of this is financial advice, and prices can be delayed or wrong. See the methodology page for how the data is collected.

Endpoints

GET /api/public/v1/card-price

Current price and up to ten printings for a single card. Requires a name query parameter (exact card name; minor punctuation differences are tolerated, maximum 120 characters). 

curl "https://www.tcgstrat.com/api/public/v1/card-price?name=Lightning%20Bolt"

Response (printings trimmed for brevity; up to 10 are returned, cheapest first):

{
  "source": "TCG Strat",
  "url": "https://www.tcgstrat.com/mtg/index/cards/lightning-bolt",
  "terms": "Free for non-commercial use with attribution. Data updates daily.",
  "data": {
    "name": "Lightning Bolt",
    "setCode": "2x2",
    "rarity": "uncommon",
    "cheapestPrice": 1.02,
    "printingsCount": 84,
    "printings": [
      {
        "setCode": "clu",
        "collectorNumber": "141",
        "finish": "nonfoil",
        "treatment": "standard",
        "tcgMarket": 1.02,
        "ckRetail": 1.49,
        "ckBuylist": 0.60,
        "mpPrice": 0.89,
        "mpQuantity": 42
      }
    ]
  }
}

cheapestPrice is the cheapest playable nonfoil printing (TCGplayer market). tcgMarket / ckRetail / ckBuylist are TCGplayer market, Card Kingdom retail, and Card Kingdom buylist prices in USD. mpPrice / mpQuantity are Mana Pool's cheapest listing and listing depth (both null when Mana Pool has no listings for the printing). Returns 404 when the card isn't found and 400 when name is missing.

GET /api/public/v1/sealed-ev

Without parameters, returns five high-signal rows plus full-universe counts for citations and discovery. Pass a productId to get one product. Both forms remain public and require no key. 

curl "https://www.tcgstrat.com/api/public/v1/sealed-ev"
curl "https://www.tcgstrat.com/api/public/v1/sealed-ev?productId=<id>"
{
  "source": "TCG Strat",
  "url": "https://www.tcgstrat.com/mtg/index/sealed",
  "terms": "Free for non-commercial use with attribution. Data updates daily.",
  "data": [
    {
      "productId": "c1f3a2...",
      "name": "Bloomburrow Play Booster Box",
      "setCode": "blb",
      "productType": "play_booster_box",
      "unitKind": "booster_display",
      "currentUnitPrice": 119.99,
      "boxPrice": 119.99,
      "headlineEv": 96.40,
      "engine": "analytical",
      "medianEv": null,
      "evRatio": 0.80,
      "signal": "hold",
      "pctChange7d": -1.2,
      "pctChange30d": 3.4
    }
  ],
  "meta": {
    "totalTracked": 870,
    "returned": 5,
    "truncated": true,
    "bulkRequiresApiKey": true
  }
}

headlineEv is the primary expected value: the median of simulated openings, an analytical mean, or a fixed-contents value, depending on engine. unitKind is the product's unit: pack, booster_display, case, bundle, deck, kit, or sealed_product. A missing or unrecognized unit is returned as sealed_product. currentUnitPrice is that unit's current market price, and evRatio is headlineEv divided by it. signal is one of crack, neutral, hold, or strong_hold. When productId is given, the envelope's url points at that product's page on The Index. Product IDs are limited to 128 URL-safe characters.

Compatibility: boxPrice is a deprecated v1 alias kept for existing integrations. It always equals currentUnitPrice, including when both are null, and meta.deprecatedFields lists it. New integrations should read unitKind and currentUnitPrice.

Server-only bulk sealed-model access

The complete sealed-model response is no longer an anonymous export. Licensed server applications can request view=bulk with a dedicated bearer credential. The response is private, is never shared-cacheable, and intentionally omits browser CORS headers so the key is not placed in frontend code. Contact admin@tcgstrat.com for access. 

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $TCGSTRAT_API_KEY" \
  "https://www.tcgstrat.com/api/public/v1/sealed-ev?view=bulk"

GET /api/public/v1/search

Card name search. Requires a q query parameter; returns matches with each card's cheapest tracked price, an image of the matched printing, and its TCG Strat page URL. Optional limit (default 10, max 10). Search text is limited to 80 characters. 

curl "https://www.tcgstrat.com/api/public/v1/search?q=ragavan&limit=10"
{
  "source": "TCG Strat",
  "url": "https://www.tcgstrat.com/mtg/index",
  "terms": "Free for non-commercial use with attribution. Data updates daily.",
  "data": [
    {
      "name": "Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer",
      "setCode": "mh2",
      "rarity": "mythic",
      "cheapestPrice": 34.55,
      "imageUri": "https://cards.scryfall.io/large/front/...",
      "url": "https://www.tcgstrat.com/mtg/index/cards/ragavan-nimble-pilferer"
    }
  ]
}

Errors and caching

Errors come back as JSON with an error field: 400 for missing parameters, 404 for not-found, 413 for an oversized MCP body, 429 when a generous abuse ceiling is exceeded, and 503 when a required dependency is unavailable. A 429 or retryable 503 includes Retry-After. Successful anonymous responses carry Cache-Control: public, s-maxage=3600, stale-while-revalidate=600 and Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *, so you can call these endpoints directly from a browser app.

MCP server: use this data in Claude or ChatGPT

Both are the same Model Context Protocol tools (get_card_price, get_sealed_ev, search_cards) wrapping the endpoints above: headline data plus a link back here for the full picture. This is read-only, capped citation data with no auth; MCP never exposes the bulk model view, and the attribution envelope rides along in every result.

ChatGPT, or Claude's connector UI

No install. Add this URL as a custom connector / remote MCP server: 

https://www.tcgstrat.com/mcp

Claude Desktop or Claude Code

These spawn a local process instead, via the tcgstrat-mcp npm package. For Claude Code, one command:

claude mcp add tcgstrat -- npx -y tcgstrat-mcp

For Claude Desktop (or any client that takes JSON config), add this to your claude_desktop_config.json: 

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tcgstrat": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "tcgstrat-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Then ask things like "what's the cheapest printing of Lightning Bolt?" or "which sealed products are trading below EV right now?", and the assistant calls the tools and cites The Index as the source.