The 46 Best Artifact Tutors in Magic Ranked

Last updated on February 18, 2026

Trophy Mage | Illustration by Anna Steinbauer

Artifacts are one of the strongest card types in Magic. There’s a reason the Power 9 contains six of them. Artifacts are primarily colorless cards, which lends a variety of powerful effects to any deck.

But, like any Magic card, artifacts are only good when you can cast them. This is where tutors come in, allowing you to find the perfect artifact card to enact your game plan (or halt your opponent’s) whenever you need it. So let’s check out the best artifact tutors in Magic!

What Are Artifact Tutors in MTG?

Fabricate | Illustration by Johan Grenier

Artifact tutors are cards that let you search your library for an artifact card and put it into your hand. They can also put it directly onto the battlefield or even into the graveyard. The important part of these cards is that they let you find an artifact from your deck and give you access to it without having to draw it naturally.

They’re powerful because they increase the consistency of your deck. Reducing variance lets you play out your game plan and impede your opponent’s plans far more effectively. Tutors function like extra copies of your best and most important cards. What could be better than that?

Honorable Mentions

These are technically artifact tutors, but I left them off the main list because they search your opponent’s library rather than yours. Thada Adel, Acquisitor is a sneaky attacker that can slip through with islandwalk, then steal the best artifact from someone’s deck. Acquire is the bigger, louder version, since it just takes an artifact straight from an opponent’s library and puts it on your battlefield.

#46. Honored Knight-Captain

Honored Knight-Captain has good pacing: It gives you a small board presence right away, then later converts into an equipment directly onto the battlefield. It isn’t trying to be flashy; it makes sure you always have something to do early and a real payoff queued up later.

#45. Delivery Moogle

What makes Delivery Moogle different from a normal tutor is that it can search the library and the graveyard, so it naturally supports grindy games. In Commander, it shines in low-curve artifact decks that want to re-find key pieces after interaction, and it also slots into blink shells that can reuse the enters trigger. If your deck cares about small artifacts and repeatable value, this one feels like a clean, honest role-player.

#44. Sun-Spider, Nimble Webber

You can never really have too many equipment tutors in a deck, especially when they come attached to a body that gives you both the card you need and a creature to use it. Sun-Spider, Nimble Webber does exactly that by tutoring an aura or equipment when it enters, which makes your plan way more consistent. Flying during your turn also helps it attack safely and stay relevant in combat, so it’s a nice fit for mid-power Voltron decks.

#43. Maximus, Knight Apparent

A 4/4 trample for 4 mana is already a solid creature, but the main reason you want Maximus, Knight Apparent is the built-in tutor. Getting a cheap equipment as it enters makes your early turns a lot smoother, and trample means that equipment turns into real damage instead of just looking cute on the board. It’s also a nice fit for energy decks that run many artifacts since it keeps the value flowing while still adding a threat that can actually end games.

#42. Mishra, Artificer Prodigy

Mishra, Artificer Prodigy is a fascinating little card. It doesn’t do much in Commander (kind of nothing, really), but the ability to tutor multiple copies of the same artifact to the battlefield is intriguing.

It doesn’t just search your library, either. Searching through multiple zones at once makes this an efficient card, even if it has high deckbuilding requirements.

#41. The First Doctor

I mean, you only get to tutor TARDIS, but the whole package on The First Doctor is enough value to encourage some sort of artifact-based deck. You'll probably want a red or green Doctor's companion to make this a viable cascade commander and make the last ability matter more often.

#40. Myr Turbine

Myr Turbine is fairly narrow with its tutoring ability, but putting myr like Myr Battlesphere into play is pretty powerful. It also works really well with cards that alter creature types like Maskwood Nexus and Arcane Adaptation.

#39. From Father to Son

At 2 mana, From Father to Son is a clean, simple vehicle tutor, which is huge if you love vehicles but hate how inconsistent they can feel. Early on, it just finds the exact ride you need to get your game plan moving. Then later, the flashback lets you go bigger since you can grab a real haymaker like Parhelion II and turn one card into a serious late-game swing.

#38. Transmutation Font

This art goes way too hard for a card that's this slow. The trick with Transmutation Font is to have a diverse set of artifact tokens already in play, then activate it right away to retrieve your best artifact and put it in play. I'm guessing Bolas's Citadel or Portal to Phyrexia, or maybe just another artifact token generator to activate more frequently.

#37. Disciples of Gix

Black doesn't have much in the way of artifact tutors. Disciples of Gix sends the tutored cards straight into the graveyard, working well with reanimation and artifact recursion effects like Open the Vaults.

#36. Scrapyard Recombiner

Scrapyard Recombiner is a typal card, but Constructs are artifact creatures. It can sacrifice itself to trigger modular, or sacrifice other creatures with modular to trigger their ability.

Altogether a useful if narrow card that, again, works really well with Maskwood Nexus and friends.

#35. Vexing Puzzlebox

Vexing Puzzlebox will find any artifact and put it straight on the battlefield for no mana, but a lot of time. It takes a while to accumulate 100 counters to find your best artifact.

Kind of like Treasure Chest, this card is more fun than good. But the influx of counter doublers we've been recieving makes it much more viable.

#34. Anchor to Reality

Rather like Renowned Weaponsmith, Anchor to Reality’s main weakness comes from its narrow scope. Only getting equipment and vehicle cards means this card only works in specific decks.

That said, there are powerful equipment like Skullclamp and the Swords, and Anchor to Reality puts them straight into play, so there's utility here.

#33. Artificer’s Intuition

This is an interesting little card. Artificer's Intuition allows you to find cheap artifacts by discarding artifacts from your hand. It's also important to note that you can use it as many times as you’d like.

It also stockpiles your graveyard with artifacts for cards that care about that, like Replenish.

#32. Saheeli Rai

Saheeli Rai’s -2 might have broken Standard at one point, but its ultimate is an obscene artifact tutor. We’ve talked at length about how putting one artifact into play is good, so how about putting three into play?

It does take a lot to get it to that point, but dropping three artifacts onto the battlefield can end the game.

#31. Moonsilver Key

Moonsilver Key is a pretty cheap (if narrow) tutor. The flexibility of finding mana rocks or basic lands is nice, and it costs virtually nothing to activate this card.

A second copy of Sol Ring is always good, especially when this can also fix your mana and trigger any abilities that care about artifacts dying.

#30. Tezzeret, Cruel Captain

Tezzeret, Cruel Captain starts doing work right away, even without the ultimate. Every time an artifact you control enters, it gains loyalty, so it can grow fast in decks full of Treasures, Clues, Foods, or cheap artifacts. The 0 ability untaps an artifact or creature, which is great for mana rocks or tap abilities, and it can even grow an artifact creature with a +1/+1 counter. The -3 is the real setup tool, since it tutors any artifact that costs 1 or less, letting you grab a key engine piece.

#29. Reshape

Tutors that put their target directly into play are always strong. That said, Reshape costs a lot. It effectively tacks onto whatever you’re searching for, meaning you’ll struggle to have the mana for more expensive artifacts.

Making you sacrifice an artifact as an additional cost is just another price you have to pay and makes this a two-for-one if an opponent counters it, making it a weaker choice.

#28. Hoarding Dragon

Hoarding Dragon is a fairly unique tutor. It doesn’t give you immediate access to the card, exiling it until the dragon dies. It poses an interesting conundrum for your opponents: Let you have a 4/4 flier, or deal with the artifact you exiled?

One drawback is that the dragon has to die to get the artifact back. If it gets removed from the battlefield by other means, that card remains exiled.

#27. Nahiri, the Harbinger

Another planeswalker with a game-ending ultimate, Nahiri, the Harbinger can remove a player from the table in the blink of an eye. No blockers? Hello, Blightsteel Colossus. Troublesome permanents? Drop a Cityscape Leveler on somebody.

This card is also massively flexible since it finds artifacts or creatures. You need to recast them, but that can be a boon for cards with cast triggers like Emrakul, the Promised End.

#26. Repurposing Bay

If you ever wanted an artifact version of Birthing Pod, Repurposing Bay fulfills that dream. It turns throwaway artifacts into a clean upgrade directly onto the battlefield, which means your deck gets to trade quantity for quality on demand.

#25. Loyal Inventor

Loyal Inventor‘s generally worse than all the tutor mage's we'll see later on, arguably even if you are playing assassins, since they rarely overlap with any meaningful artifact strategies. At worst this is the more ferrous version of Moon-Blessed Cleric, and tutoring to the top of your library can still be pretty effective with the right follow-up.

#24. Sphinx Summoner

Sphinx Summoner is just simple, clean value. It's a little expensive at 5 mana, but it finds another artifact creature and pressures opponents with flying. And flicker shenanigans allow you to get a ton of value out of this card by finding more and more creatures since this is an enters-the-battlefield ability.

#23. Reckless Handing

Reckless Handling mimics Gamble, but for a more narrow subset of cards. There's some “upside” here if you end up pitching the card you just tutored, though as with Gamble, the best bet is to search for a card that works just as well from the graveyard as it does in your hand. Or maybe something you don't mind getting back with a Scrap Mastery or Trash for Treasure.

#22. Transit Mage

Transit Mage doesn’t look much better than cards like Trinket Mage or Treasure Mage at first, since it’s still just a tutor on a body. The difference is the exact mana value range it hits, because grabbing a 4- or 5-drop is where a lot of the best artifact payoffs live. Once you realize it can tutor The One Ring, it starts to feel way more important.

#21. Scour for Scrap

Scour for Scrap is a great way to recharge an artifact deck mid-game. It can search up an artifact you need, bring one back from the graveyard, or do both. That flexibility is great for Commander toolboxes, since it’s rarely a dead draw. It’s also surprisingly good at putting together Painter's Servant and Grindstone, because it helps you find the missing piece and still has value if your first try gets stopped.

#20. Fabricate

Fabricate is the cleanest, most literal example of an artifact tutor. You find an artifact from your library and put it into your hand. But 3 mana is a lot for this effect, and being sorcery speed also hurts this card’s playability a bit. It’s worth running, just not super exciting.

#19. Treasure Mage

Treasure Mage is also 3 mana and sorcery speed, but it does leave a body behind, and flicker effects let you get multiple uses out of its ability. There are several mages that tutor for artifacts, but this card only getting expensive artifacts gives it a little less utility than its contemporaries.

Big artifacts are great for ending games but don’t help if you’re missing land drops or looking to play this early.

#18. Trophy Mage

Trophy Mage can help the early game. You can presumably cast anything you find off it since you already had the mana to cast the Mage, which could include mana rocks like Chromatic Lantern and Worn Powerstone, or disruptive pieces like Trinisphere and Static Orb.

#17. Tezzeret the Seeker

Tezzeret the Seeker is fairly expensive but has the benefit of putting an artifact directly into play. Its first loyalty ability also helps offset its cost by untapping artifacts like mana rocks you might have used to play it, and it's got an ultimate that can win a game.

#16. Tribute Mage

Like Trophy Mage, Tribute Mage benefits from finding cards you can always cast since you had the mana for this one. Finding artifacts with a mana value of 2 is also very useful in EDH since most of the mana rocks that see play in that format cost 2 mana, like the Signets and the Talismans.

#15. Transmute Artifact

Transmute Artifact is a little wordy but quite strong. It can turn a larger artifact into a smaller one right away, or turn a smaller artifact into a more expensive one with a bit of a mana investment.

This is similar to Reshape, except it gives you far more options and can just tutor an artifact into your graveyard for .

#14. Kuldotha Forgemaster

Kuldotha Forgemaster is another card that puts an artifact right into play without costing any mana. Sacrificing three other artifacts can be a lot, but the Forgemaster can sacrifice itself to make it easier.

Since this is an activated ability it also means that most counterspells can’t stop the oncoming artifact.

#13. Goblin Engineer

One of the best red ETB cards, Goblin Engineer is another card that pitches the artifact straight into your graveyard, but it can get a cheap artifact back with its activated ability. Sending the tutored card into the ‘yard is a boon for red, which already wants to interact with artifacts in its graveyard.

This card works great with other red recursive spells like Trash for Treasure and Daretti, Scrap Savant.

#12. Iron Man, Titan of Innovation

Marvelous. Though they just missed the mark on making this a true titan, since there's no ETB effect. At any rate, the commander version of Tony Stark works like a Pod commander for artifacts, but spots you the first artifact up front with a Treasure token. That's huge, because it means Iron Man, Titan of Innovation almost always puts your best 1-mana artifact into play the first turn it hits the board. From there you can either work up the chain, or continue putting cheap artifacts into play with the Treasure you make on each attack trigger.

#11. Arcum Daggson

Putting the tutored card into play is super strong, and Arcum Dagsson doesn’t even require a mana investment to do this. It requires some deckbuilding foresight since it needs both artifact creatures to sacrifice and noncreature artifacts to tutor for, but that’s a deckbuilding requirement well worth building around when the card can turn your measly little Thopter token into a Bolas's Citadel or Portal to Phyrexia.

#10. Brightglass Gearhulk

Of the three tutor options here, grabbing artifacts will probably be the most broken thing you can do with Brightglass Gearhulk. There are tons of 1- and 0-mana artifacts that you can run out immediately after resolving this creature, and it has respectable stats in play as well. It does a good, beefy impression of Ranger of Eos in non-artifact decks, and even has play in GW enchantress decks.

#9. Magda, Brazen Outlaw

Here we've got one heck of a dwarf. Magda, Brazen Outlaw is an incredibly solid turn 2 play, exerting pressure on your opponents while generating mana in the form of Treasures.

Its tutor ability is also very strong. It takes very little work to create five Treasures, and the utility of finding artifacts or dragons without any restrictions makes it easy to end a game with Magda.

#8. Inventors’ Fair

Inventors' Fair lets you find any artifact by paying some mana and sacrificing it once you have three or more artifacts. It also gains life at the three artifact threshold, giving it some extra utility.

Going down a land generally won’t hurt an artifact-centric deck too much either, since they tend to ramp really hard or run a ton of cheap spells.

#7. Oswald Fiddlebender

Oswald Fiddlebender is a nifty little card. Basically Birthing Pod but for artifacts, it lets you turn the littlest artifacts on your board into the biggest ones in your deck.

Oswald Fiddlebender does two very powerful things. It sacrifices your artifacts to enable death triggers, and puts the tutored card right into play for immediate impact and value.

#6. Trinket Mage

The last of the Mages, Trinket Mage is also the best because it can find some of the best artifacts. Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, Sol Ring, Chalice of the Void, Grafdigger's Cage… the list of targets goes on and on.

With better hits than any of its peers, this card is easily the best Mage and just one of the best artifact tutors.

#5. Cloud, Midgar Mercenary

I cannot stress enough how strong it is to have a cheap tutor in the command zone, especially when you can build around something as oppressive as Skullclamp. That’s why Cloud, Midgar Mercenary stands out so much. It does one job and does it well: Find the equipment you need, suit up, and start taking over the game.

#4. Tinker

People who play Vintage and Vintage Cube are likely familiar with Tinker’s insane power. So powerful, in fact, that it’s been banned in every sanctioned format except Vintage, and it's restricted there. It costs next to nothing and takes almost no setup to use this on turn 2 or 3 to deliver an incredibly powerful threat.

Tinker could arguably top this list if, you know, it was playable and not banned virtually everywhere.

#3. Whir of Invention

Costing triple blue makes Whir of Invention one of the more mana-intensive cards on this list, but it more than makes up for it in sheer utility. It doesn’t just put the tutored card into play but can be cast at instant speed. Did an opponent cast a troublesome planeswalker? Grab Pithing Needle before it resolves, and your opponent gets no use out of it.

Improvise offsets the amount of mana you need by letting you tap artifacts you don’t need untapped like Void Mirror and Damping Sphere, making this super well-rounded and insanely strong.

#2. Urza’s Saga

Crowning the colorless artifact tutors is Urza's Saga. It takes a few turns for the tutor to come into effect, but it hits all those best artifacts listed with Trinket Mage, and even puts them into play.

The second chapter’s ability also lets this card develop a massive threat while finding those wonderful cards. And the tutor ability doesn’t even cost mana. This card is busted.

#1. Enlightened Tutor

Enlightened Tutor isn’t just white's best tutor for artifacts, but one of the best artifact tutors in general, and overall one of the best white instants in the game. Putting the tutored card on top of your library means you need to plan out your sequence of plays, but it’s worth it to find any artifact for a single white mana at instant speed.

Plus this card can also find enchantments for added flexibility.

Best Artifact Tutor Payoffs

While finding artifacts is great value, tutors are only as good as the cards they get. The best cards to tutor for are artifacts that either function as silver bullets to stop your opponent’s gameplan, or ones that win you the game. Cards like Pithing Needle, Grafdigger's Cage, and Void Mirror are powerful disruptive pieces that put in a lot of work to stop your opponents.

Tutors that put expensive artifacts into play are also great for deploying powerful threats like Bolas's Citadel and Portal to Phyrexia well before you could actually hard cast those cards. You can also find game-ending combo pieces. For example, the combination of Etherium Sculptor, The Reality Chip, and Sensei's Divining Top allows you to draw your entire library and win with Thassa's Oracle, and all of those pieces can be found with the artifact tutors listed above.

Another powerful combo now available on Arena is Painter's Servant plus Grindstone. With commanders like Lady Octopus, Inspired Inventor or Emry, Lurker of the Loch in Brawl, you can play a counterspell-heavy game plan until you assemble the combo and win.

Wrap Up

Goblin Engineer | Illustration by Jehan Choo

Artifacts are one of Magic’s strongest card types, and the ability to find the one you need when you need it makes artifact tutors powerful themselves. Between finding silver bullet answers to super specific threats and getting game-ending threats of your own, artifact tutors offer incredible consistency and flexibility to artifact-centric decks.

That said, it’s important to remember that tutors are only as good as the cards they tutor for. If the only artifacts in your deck are a handful of Signets, it’s probably not worth running some of these cards.

What did you all think of my rankings? Is there anything you'd change? Let me know in the comments below or over in the Draftsim Discord.

That's all from me for now. Stay safe, stay healthy, and wash your hands!