Last updated on November 10, 2025
Screenshot from MPC
Any long-time Magic: The Gathering player knows how expensive the hobby can be. Go ahead, ask your friend with a decade-plus of MTG experience how much they’ve spent on cardboard in the past 10 years. Make sure you bring a tissue for when they inevitably begin to weep.
Lucky for you, playing Magic doesn’t have to be expensive! While some individual cards can see their prices soar alongside their popularity, proxied Magic cards will always be a cheap alternative for the economic deck builder. Where can you get these proxied Magic cards, and which are the best deals? Let’s take a quick look at the cheapest places to get MTG proxies online!
What Are Cheap Proxies?
Cut a Deal | Illustration by Fajareka Setiawan
Proxied Magic: The Gathering cards are stand-ins produced by companies and often sold for about the price of a real common Magic card. They are not legal for tournament use or sale. Doing so can turn them into fake Magic cards. Instead, many players use proxies for playtesting and casual games. They’re sometimes sold in cycles of high-power cards, like Proxyking’s Dual Land set. Others are sold in proxy boosters, best used to spice up whatever Limited format you play.
The cheapest proxy sites will have deals for purchasing large numbers of cards, and offer discounts on specific singles.
#6. MTG Proxy
MTG Proxy sells proxies in bulk at different rates depending on the volume of your order. Prices start at $2 each for up to nine cards, then decrease to $1.50 per card when you order 10 or more. At 50 cards, the price per card becomes $1 each, and $0.75 each once you reach 200+ cards. Shipping is a flat $5 in the US and $25 international. A full order of 200 cards would come out to $150, plus shipping. MTG Proxy also offers a foil upgrade: $3 per card at 10 cards, $2.50 for 11-99 cards, and $2 each once you order 100 cards or more.
MTG Proxy also offers complete sets of Magic cards, but ordering the entirety of, say, Innistrad Remastered doesn’t come with any further discount, and you still pay $0.75 per card for all 287 cards. And they also sell Proxy Boosters, boosters with 16 high-power and rare proxy cards.
Overall, MTG Proxy’s prices are about average for the market. They don’t offer as many discounts as some other sites, but they're a fair deal and they ship quickly.
#5. The Proxy Forge
The Proxy Forge offers their own custom proxy Magic cards with unique art. In order to avoid copyright infringement they don’t print anything that really looks like a Magic card, but their cards are still effective proxies. And they look gorgeous, too!
The Proxy Forge doesn’t sell a proxy for every Magic card, and you can’t upload your own images to the order. Instead, they offer custom art of various Commander staples and high-power cards for around $4 each. They also sell specific Commander precon upgrade packs and ready-to-play decks with entirely custom artwork. Typically, the precon upgrade backs run about $20 and an entire, non-foil Commander deck clocks in at $200 (though there are several on sale for $120).
The Proxy Forge does offer a discount on 100-card custom Commander decks. Pricing starts at $5.50 per unique card ($8.50 for double-sided cards), but each card only needs to be designed once; the second/third/fourth copies of each card come in at $3.50. Foiling costs an additional $2 per card, and their site says they might offer you a $150 discount if they like your deck and want to sell it on their site.
The Proxy Forge is one of the more expensive proxy sites, but you get what you pay for. Their proxies are on high-quality card stock and have some amazing artwork. However, if you want proxies that look like traditional Magic cards, this isn’t the site for you.
#4. ProxyPrintery
ProxyPrintery is my next pick. They have the ability to upload full decklists, a google drive full of images, or by uploading an XML file with the card data, meaning it's incredibly easy to get a bulk list or full set of proxies in a single order. They even have proxy services in German and Italian languages, not just English.
Ordering is simple: paste your decklist link, select which tokens you do and don't want, and your order is ready to be placed. Pricing begins at ~$2.75 per card, but drops to just $0.51 (€0.44) per card if you're ordering a full EDH deck's worth of cards. If you're picking up something larger, like a cube, that can go as low $0.34 (€0.29) per card!
They also don't cut corners when it comes to quality. They have multiple different card stocks for different applications, ranging from standard paper for play-testing to holo-foils that look and feel like real cards.
#3. Proxy King
Proxy King sells both singles and sets of proxy Magic cards for around $4 each, or $5 for a foil. Their sets come in cycles of original dual lands, shocklands, triomes, the Power Nine and more. Sets of 10 cards go for about $30, while 5-card sets usually sit around $15, though they go on sale frequently for a few dollars less.
Proxy King’s prices are a little steep, averaging about twice as much as Printing Proxies and MTG Proxy, but their proxies are high quality. They won’t fool a judge, but they look great in your casual deck and are still a huge discount over actually buying that Mana Vault.
#2. Printing Proxies
Printing Proxies sells proxy Magic cards at a slightly better rate than many other sites; $2 each single-digit singles, $1 per card for 60, 100, or up to 199 cards, and $0.75 per card for more than 200 cards. You can add $3 for foil treatment per 1-10 cards, $2.50 for 11-99 foils, and $2 per card for a foiled out Commander deck or more. They also allow you to upload your own custom card images at the same price.
With all the options available, Printing Proxies is a great cost per card for less than 10 cards, and a comparable price to other sites when you order 50 or more.
#1. Make Playing Cards
Make Playing Cards and its associated editor app, MPC Fill, are the most popular ways to get proxy cards for Magic. Make Playing Cards is a site that allows you to order entirely custom proxy playing card decks; usually for poker and other non-TCG card games, but they offer several sizes and layouts that match Magic cards. Their site is a little difficult to use, and requires you to either fully customize each card one at a time, or use their app MPC Fill and its associated desktop app to download an XML file of your entire order, run it through a program, and then upload it to the Make Playing Cards site during your order process.
While MPC offers quite a few different layouts for their TCG cards, none match the Magic card design perfectly. They sell cards at fixed rates similar to other proxy sites, but the cards are priced on a per-deck basis. For example, one deck of 108 cards with S33 card stock costs $33.30, or about $0.33 per card. This is a great price, and it gets better as you order more cards and more decks.
MPC is a good choice for the average proxy-hunting Magic player. While their “main thing” is to create multiple copies of the same custom deck (for weddings, corporate events, your own custom TCG, etc.), they make a great proxy Magic deck and consistently have the best price with the most options for card stock, finish, and packaging.
Notable Mentions: Printers, Pens and Basics
You can use what you already have to make a proxy card. That's what many players swear by as the absolute cheapest method of making proxies. There is still a spectrum here from a great printer for proxies to permanent marker on a basic land. A basic land lot or any bulk Magic card you have more than enough of should be less than $0.10 per card. The beauty of your own playtest cards is Wizards already does this and you can too, and a site like MTG Print makes it even easier.
- 500 Magic: The Gathering Basic Lands
- 100 of each basic land type
- 100 Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, Forest
Wrap Up
Arcane Proxy | Illustration by Kekai Kotaki
Playing high-power Magic doesn’t have to be expensive! Cheap MTG proxies are available all over the internet and at some very fair prices. Let go of your ethical hang-ups, buy some proxies, and have fun at competitive Commander night when everyone has their own copy of The One Ring.
What are your favorite places to get proxies? Would you ever proxy an entire Commander deck? How much have you spent on Magic in your lifetime, and how much would you have saved by just buying proxies? Let me know in the comments, or over on Draftsim's Twitter/X.
Thank you for reading, and remember: It’s cardboard!
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