Reviewed: The Best Deck Builder for MTG

Last updated on January 30, 2024

Rebuild | Illustration by Lindsey Look

Deckbuilding is a very important aspect of Magic. It’s the backbone of each format, and you can’t really play the game without it. Even with netdecking, there’s a deckbuilding process somewhere along the way, so it’s truly one of the most crucial aspects of the game.

Building the deck of your dreams in the digital MTG realm requires an online deck builder. These websites and programs allow you to save and store your decks in readable formats and keep a database of your decks, as well as being able to export them to stores, games like MTG Online and Arena, and keep them in a unified format.

Today we’ll be looking at the best of the best, the cream of the crop, the ultimate deck builder. Join me on this adventure, this journey, this quest to find the one true deck builder.

The Best Overall

Onward / Victory | Illustration by Grzegorz Rutkowski

Now, right off of the bat, I’m going to tell you that Moxfield is the best deck builder. Why? I’ll go into it later, but for those of you who just want the juicy details, Moxfield has a ton of features and is a really well-designed site. It can also be used as a simplistic deck designer and an intricate database for a primer. So, if you need to use a deck builder (or a strange voice in the aether asks you for an answer to this question), this is the one I’d recommend.

On to the nitty gritty…

What We’re Looking For: The Criteria

When I was sent on this quest, I first decided to just use all of the deck builders I could find in my day-to-day Magic work. I put each one through the test of four formats: Modern, Draft, Commander, and Penny Dreadful, each format being different in its own way and having different requirements.

With these deck builders, I’m looking for a few different things.

• Intuitiveness: The deck builder has to be easy to understand and simple to use at a base level while allowing more experienced users to take advantage of advanced features.
• UI Design: The deck builder has to look appealing and be responsive and fast enough to not be a hindrance.
• Free Features: The more free features, the better!
• Modernism: Things need to look modern, not like it's from the last century. Sorry, TappedOut.
• Bonus points for the visual appeal/aesthetic, prices, sorting options, and playtesting.

So, with all that being said, let's take a look at all of the top deck builders I’ve shortlisted!

#7: TappedOut

• Intuitiveness: 3/5
• UI Design: 1/5
• Free Features: 3/5
• Modernism: 1/5
• Other Features: Forums, sorting folders, alters listing

TappedOut.net deck view

Many of us started our Magic journeys on TappedOut.net. As one of the oldest deckbuilding sites, TappedOut was a household name among playgroups across the world as early on as 2008 (and probably before then). Unfortunately, the site still acts like it's the mid-‘00s and hasn’t changed their layout much in the interim.

Like most sites, it has a forum for deck building discussion, and its actual deck builder lets you choose a featured card and some display options for the deck on the website. The deck builder is missing one of the key features I need in a deck builder, which is the ability to auto-complete card names as you type them rather than typing full names one at a time or getting most of the way through the name before I can hit “enter” and add the card. But, the generally dark theme of the site is useful for late-night brewing.

Other than that, it doesn’t have a whole lot going for it anymore, and you can easily replicate the experience with a much cleaner looking site.

#6. Archidekt

• Intuitiveness: 1/5
• UI Design: 3/5
• Free Features: 3/5
• Modernism: 3/5

Archidekt.com deck view

Archidekt’s homepage is suspiciously similar to Moxfield’s, as are all their features. Archidekt’s similarities stop at the actual deck builder, where their inferiority to Moxfield truly shows. The deck builder lays over the screen in an unpleasant way, and it took me a couple tries to really get comfortable with the app. Eventually, I gave up and just pasted a decklist in text format from another site.

It split my Slivers deck automatically into player-defined categories like “Evasion” and “Protection,” which is nice if those were the reasons you included those cards specifically, but more of an obnoxious function you’ll have to toggle off if it's not your thing.

Archidekt.com playtester

Archidekt’s playtester leaves a lot to be desired. Cards in your hand bounce all over the place if you tap your mouse scroll, and the actual battlefield becomes cluttered easily. Not the best in the group, but not at the back of the pack.

#5. MTGGoldfish

• Intuitiveness: 3/5
• UI Design: 2/5
• Free Features: 3/5
• Modernism: 2/5
• Other Features: Good blog, meta analysis

MTGGoldfish.com homepage

Oh, gross, some of you are actually creating your decks on MTGGoldfish? I thought we were just joking? MTGGoldfish is one of the most popular Magic sites on the web and frequently tops my search results when I’m on the hunt for deck lists to cannibalize. However, I hate looking at that god-forsaken website. While I appreciate their hardcore meta-analysis and honestly wonderful articles on their blog, the site is such an eyesore sometimes I’d much rather use Moxfield or deckstats.

Changing almost anything once you’ve got a deck to view is a whole process that involves multiple page loads, a pet-peeve that hounds me like no other. MTGGoldfish gives you the standard deck analysis with color and card type breakdowns, but not much else. You can tag your deck in a specific format to see how it compares to the rest of the meta, making MTGGoldfish a good starting point for the burgeoning deck builder.

#4: Scryfall

• Intuitiveness: 2/5
• UI Design: 4/5
• Free Features: 2/5
• Modernism: 3/5
• Other Features: Best card database on the web

Scryfall.com deck view

Scryfall.com has done so much for deck building online, it can’t be overstated. As the best and most complete Magic card database (yes, even better than Wizards’s official Gatherer), Scryfall isn’t just one of the best sites to build your deck on, it’s the source for most other deck building sites’ databases.

Many of you probably didn’t even know Scryfall had their own built-in deck builder. Scryfall’s deck builder is one of my favorites because it can guess what I meant when I’ve misspelled a card with a surprising amount of accuracy. “Gobiln Lacky” did in fact register as Goblin Lackey, and that helps a lot when I’m flying through a decklist trying to upload it as fast as possible. Its text-upload for my deck list from another site added every card to my sideboard, but that wasn’t a huge issue.

Scryfall.com deck templates

That’s about where Scryfall’s functions end, though. There isn’t much else you can do besides create a deck, and the site lacks deck analysis.

#3: ManaStack

• Intuitiveness: 3/5
• UI Design: 4/5
• Free Features: 4/5
• Modernism: 4/5
• Other Features: Multiplayer playtester

ManaStack.com playtester

ManaStack.com is the new kid on the block as far as deck builder sites go, and it’s made a strong showing in its rookie year. ManaStack is easy on the eyes, and it has a drag-and-drop style deck builder and all the basic functionality you’ve come to expect from a deck building site.

Its deck data analysis is a bit basic, but ManaStack’s true strength is its multiplayer playtesting capability. ManaStack has a deck playtest option that functions similar to Cockatrice. The table it simulates has no built-in rules, so players are mostly tapping and drawing and searching for cards manually. But solely having the option to test your deck against another, not simply in a vacuum, can do wonders for your deck building.

ManaStack really only loses points on its poorly-sorted discussions page and the fact that they want you to pay $5/month so an AI can help you build your deck. It does give you access to a matchmaking mode for their playtester, but at that point you could download Cockatrice and get the same experience for free.

#2: Deckstats

• Intuitiveness 3/5
• UI Design 3/5
• Free Features 3/5
• Modernism 2/5
• Other Features: Forums, probabilities analysis, sortable folders

When I first jumped-ship from TappedOut, I landed on deckstats.net. The deckstats site has a similarly simple view, but I’ve grown fond of its plain black-text-on-a-gray-background design. The lack of any clear labels to take you to your decks immediately is kind of a pain, but as soon as you get the hang of it, deckstats is an easy site to navigate. Decks can be sorted in folders and sub-folders, which is super important to a brewer like me who’s frequently categorizing decks into different subjective groups.

Deckstats.net deck view

I’ve found deckstats’s plain design beneficial when I’m trying to analyze the hard data about a deck. Their details page displaying the curve, card type, mana cost and mana source distributions are all set right at the top of the screen, and you can hover over parts of the pie charts to get the exact number of cards making up that percentage. Plus, their starting hand feature works great for playtesting a couple draws.

Finally, the automatic probabilities analysis is the easiest for me to read. This tool is great for the player who can’t be bothered to calculate what the chances are to draw one of their two copies of a card out of the 53 left in their deck.

Deckstats.net probabilities view

#1: Moxfield

• Intuitiveness: 4/5
• UI Design: 5/5
• Free Features: 4/5
• Modernism: 4/5
• Other Features: Forums, Moxie (wordle game), Dark Mode

Moxfield.com deck view

Moxfield is the frontrunner for the coveted Draftsim best deck building website award. Moxfield’s deck builder is the cleanest to use, and it’s on the same screen as the deck view page.

Moxfield’s playester won’t let you load multiple players into a game, but it does have some of the best UI I’ve ever used. Intuitive hotkeys make playing through the first few turns of your new deck easy as can be.

It doesn’t have a forum, instead referring people to the comments on decks to generate discussion. It does have a powerful search engine, letting you filter decks down to specific cards in specific formats, so I can usually find discussion in the comments of the most popular decks returned by those searches. Moxfield also lets you create and save “packages,” so if you find yourself adding the same five cards to a lot of EDH decks, you can quickly slot them into a deck without searching for each individually.

Best of all, it’s free! You can support them on Patreon for as little as $1/month, but it’s not required to access the site’s full functionality.

Moxfield.com playtester

My only gripe with Moxfield is I can’t share entire folders of decks. Decks on your account only display as a list in descending “date created” order. I’ve got a whole mess of kitchen table decks I’m trying to show my friends! Don’t make me re-host them all on deckstats!

Which Deck Builder To Use

Moxfield is the builder I use for competitive formats like Penny Dreadful or Highlander so I have the ability to brew and build with the tools that I need, and I use Archidekt for EDH.

The best deck builder is the one that suits your needs the most or that you’re used to. So try them all out! Use them interchangeably! They’re all there for your use.

Bonus: The #1 Limited Deck Builder

So, we’ve looked at the best deck builders for Constructed formats. What about the best Sealed and Draft deck builders? Well, there’s no other place than our very own deck builder!

I’m going to be honest, Draftsim is a great starting point if you’re inexperienced with Limited. It works extremely well with Arena and is a good way to learn how building affects gameplay in the format since you can see the deck during the game.

For example, there is a feature to “autobuild” your deck by clicking on the magic wand. It suggests the best 40 card deck for you based on Draftsim's card ratings. These same features also exist inside Draftsim's free MTGA deck tracker, Arena Tutor.

I do think this is a tool that more experienced Limited players can omit from their inventory. The same goes if you’re familiar with how to build a Constructed deck.

That said, the building interface itself is still way better than what exists on MTGA and allows you to do a lot more sorting into piles than the native program does.

If you’re feeling a bit intimidated and don’t know where to start, not to worry: We’ve got you covered!

Wrap Up

Angel of Finality | Illustration by Howard Lyon

And that’s it! I’ll broker no argument or disagreement here. My word is obviously final and any dissenting opinions can be relegated to the comments section below.

Think I’m wrong about Moxfield? Still a die-hard TappedOut user in the current year? Feel like you’re being gaslit by ranking Deckstats at #2? Hop in those comments to roast me, or feel free to send long-winded responses to us on Draftsim’s Twitter/X or Discord!

Thanks for reading, keep on brewing!